Control of the location update and paging signaling load in cellular systems by means of planning tools

Efficient resource utilisation in future cellular systems requires the control of the signalling load imposed by the location update and paging operations. This relies on the "proper" planning of location areas. In this paper we define and solve a version of the location area planning problems. Starting from a formal definition and an optimal formulation, three computationally efficient algorithms, adhering to the simulated annealing, taboo search, and genetic algorithm paradigms, are presented.