Integration of commercial routing with flood search routing

Integration of commercial personal communications services (PCS) technology with tactical communication systems portends to offer tremendous advantages to the warfighter, not the least of which are improved quality wireless access, and light weight and portable phones. Integration of the two systems will require conversion of signaling and routing protocols. This paper addresses the routing issues for integration of a code division multiple access (CDMA) digital PCS system with the mobile subscriber equipment (MSE) army tactical communications system. The over the air standard for the next generation digital cellular CDMA system defines the signaling protocol and message formats for mobile station (MS) to base station (BS) interoperability. Part of this standard describes the MS registration process. Subscribers register with the CDMA system through the use of a variety of different registration types. These registration types are required so that a mobile may wander over the coverage area of the system, and into coverage areas of other system providers utilizing the same standard. Users' position and profile data base information is exchanged through the use of home and visitor location registers, which communicate as the mobile subscriber wanders throughout the system. Thus, switches can route calls appropriately. MSE, on the other hand uses saturation routing, i.e. flood search routing to complete calls. A subscriber affiliation process unambiguously registers the user and all profile information associated with the user to one switch. Flood search routing is used in the system to locate the subscriber and the trunk between switches are marked for call connection between the parties. Integration of PCS registration messaging and MSE flood search routing will provide means for incorporation of CDMA technology into the MSE system.