A non-linear binary integer programming model for location management design of GPRS

Abstract

The scarce radio resources available to any cellular radio network have to be shared between its revenue-generating voice- and data-carrying services, and non-revenue-generating management services. One of these management services is location management, crucial for the network to keep track of the location of its subscribers and to connect their incoming calls. Location management consists of the two activities paging and location updating, both of which are structured around a subdivision of the network service area called the registration areas, either location areas or routing areas. The ways with which service area is partitioned has a direct impact on the amount of radio bandwidth to be spent on location management. However, paging and location updating share an antagonistic relationship, and finding the optimal registration areas partitioning that strikes a balance between the two is a challenging design problem. Although the design of optimal location management has been studied extensively for GSM, it is surprising that little, or possibly no, attention has been given to the consideration of location management design for GPRS, given that it is fast becoming a de facto system. The objective of the paper is to find the optimal registration areas partitioning of a GPRS that minimises the total location management signalling cost. © 2005 IEEE.