Optimal replication of location information in mobile networks

An important issue in the design of future personal communication services (PCS) networks is the efficient management of location information. In this paper, we consider a distributed database architecture for location management in which update and query loads of the individual databases are balanced. An important issue to consider in load balanced location management algorithms is the number of databases a mobile host's location information is updated in. To have the same replication for all mobiles is not optimal. In this paper we present a dynamic load balanced algorithm which replicates mobile hosts according to their level of activity. We analyze the algorithms and derive expressions for the cost of the algorithm. We compare the algorithm with an existing algorithm and show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.