Efficient and Flexible Location Management Techniques for Wireless Communication Systems

Abstract

We consider the problem of managing the information required to locate users in a wireless communication system, with a focus on designing and evaluating location management techniques that are effcient, scalable, and flexible. The three key contributions of this paper are: (1) A family of location management techniques, HiPER (for Hierarchical ProfilE Replicationthat effciently provide life-long (non-geographic) numbering with fast location lookup; (2) Pleiades, a scalable event-driven wireless system simulator with realistic calling and mobility patterns derived from several months of real traffc traces; and (3) multi-day simulations comparing our proposed location management techniques with current and previously proposed techniques on a realistic geographical and network topology. Research supported by the Center for Telecommunications and the Center for Integrated Systems at Stanford Universityand by equipment grants from Digital and IBM Corporations. 1