Variability of location management costs with different mobilities and timer periods to update locations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how location management costs in mobile networks vary with mobility patterns and timer periods, identifying optimal conditions and thresholds for cost-effective management.

Contribution

It introduces a threshold for Call-to-Mobility Ratio to determine when timer-based location management is most effective and characterizes cost behavior across different mobility scenarios.

Findings

Cost valleys diminish below CMR of 0.7.

Optimal timeout intervals grow with mobility and paging costs.

Cost behavior varies with movement dimension and paging cost.

Abstract

In this article, we examine the Location Management costs in mobile communication networks utilizing the timer-based method. From the study of the probabilities that a mobile terminal changes a number of Location Areas between two calls, we identify a threshold value of 0.7 for the Call-to-Mobility Ratio (CMR) below which the application of the timer-based method is most appropriate. We characterize the valley appearing in the evolution of the costs with the timeout period, showing that the time interval required to reach 90% of the stabilized costs grows with the mobility index, the paging cost per Location Area and the movement dimension, in opposition to the behavior presented by the time interval that achieves the minimum of the costs. The results obtained for CMRs below the suggested 0.7 threshold show that the valley appearing in the costs tends to disappear for CMRs within [0.001, 0.7] in onedimensional movements and within [0.2, 0.7] in two-dimensional ones, and when the normalized paging cost per Location Area is below 0.3.