On signaling performance bounds of location management in Next Generation Wireless Networks

Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN) are proposed to achieve the goal of ubiquitous broadband networking by utilizing multiple wireless access subnetworks serving overlapping areas. Location management schemes play a very important role in NGWN since mobile users roam in coverage areas of these subnetworks simultaneously. The performance of location management schemes directly affect the overall performance of NGWN at large. In this paper, signaling performance bounds achievable by a location management scheme in the wireless portion of NGWN are presented. Assuming complete knowledge about user mobility, call arrival patterns, detailed maps of subnetworks coverage areas, and other NGWN parameters, equations for signaling performance achievable by an idealized location management scheme over the wireless interface has been derived. The performance bounds presented in this paper serve as an upper bound for the performance of any other location management scheme designed for NGWN. These bounds are intended to serve as a benchmark to determine how well a proposed location management scheme operates in NGWN and will help to determine how much room for improvement exists. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.