Contents I. INTRODUCTION
In PCSN environment, whenever an MT roams around within the total service area with a call in progress and if it crosses the boundary of an LA it was previously residing in and comes under the service area of a different switch, it would request for one or more handoffs depending upon the call duration and its mobility pattern, since in the present work only inter-switch handoff is considered. Here we are assuming that for each LA in the total coverage area, one MSC or switch is dedicated, which means that only single homing case is dealt with in this work. F or each successful handoff, the network performs location update and paging automatically, to connect the ongoing call to the user presently residing in a new LA. In this respect, the planning of location area deserves more attention, as average number of handoff requests will depend on the location area configuration. The upper bound on the size of a location area is the service area of a mobile switching center (MSC). This calls for a design consideration for finding out the optimum number of microcells, which can be assigned to an MSC to form an LA, such that the total network cost incurred for performing successful inter-switch handoffs can be minimized.
