A comparative study on location tracking strategies in cellular mobile radio systems

An efficient mobile location tracking strategy should minimize the combined cost of paging and location update. This combined cost depends on a mobile's mobility as well as its incoming call arrival rate. We derive the optimal location area size for the fixed location area (FLA) strategy and the distance-based location area (DBLA) strategy using the fluid mobility model. We then compare these two strategies and identify the problems of the distance-based approach. A composite strategy called adaptive location tracking (ALT) strategy is described. Numerical examples show that the ALT strategy always gives better performance than the FLA and the DBLA strategies. Contrary to the conventional expectation, the FLA strategy is found to outperform the DBLA strategy in many cases. This is due to the large location area overlapping with the use of DBLA strategy.