A Protocol for Seamless Communication in a Picocellular Network

In this paper we present an architecture for a picocellular network and present a novel communication protocol for mobile users in such networks. The cell size in these networks is very small { typically of the order of a room in a building, resulting in an environment where the movement between cells is very rapid. This makes the problem of maintaining communication between a pair of mobile users non-trivial. Our communication protocol uses groups to maintain communication between two mobile users. Groups are special collections of picocells and represent regions where a mobile user is likely to be located in the near future. Thus, messages addressed to this mobile user are multicast to all the picocells in the group guaranteeing delivery and obviating the need for messages to be forwarded between picocells. The mobile users will therefore see lower delays in message delivery times.