Location Area Design Algorithms for Minimizing Signalling Costs in Mobile Networks

In the next generation, IP-based mobile networks, one of the most important QoS parameters, are the delay and the delay variation. The cell handover causes incremental signalling traffic, which can be critical from the point of view of delay variation. It worsens the quality parameters of the real-time services, which are the backbone of next generation mobile commercial services. We have designed and implemented two algorithms: a location area forming algorithm (LAFA) and a cell regrouping algorithm (CEREAL), which can help us to guarantee QoS parameters in the next generation mobile networks. We used our realistic mobile environment simulator to generate input statistics on cell changes and incoming calls for our algorithms and by comparing the values of the cost functions proposed by us, we recognized that significant reduction was achieved in the amount of the signalling traffic; the location update cost was decreased by 40-60% in average.