A novel location management in IP-based cellular networks

Mobile IP provides a simple and scalable global mobility solution that supports users to access the Internet at anytime and anywhere. However, as the number or the velocity of the mobile IP users grows, the signaling overhead associated with the mobility management also grows. One of the solutions, cellular IP, a micro-mobility protocol, provides a seamless mobility support for semi-soft handoff and paging in limited geographical areas. In this paper, we propose a new micro-mobility management, which is an extension of cellular IP. Two special features are added in our scheme: page area group and pointer forwarding. Analytical model is developed to evaluate the reduction of signaling overhead of the proposed scheme. Simulation results are also conducted to verify our analysis. Our numerical results show that the proposed scheme can reduce the signaling overhead effectively.