An improved timer-based location management scheme for packet-switched (PS) mobile communication systems

Abstract

This letter proposes an improved timer-based location management scheme for packet-switched (PS) mobile communication systems. Compared to the conventional timer-based scheme with a single timer threshold, a new timer-based scheme with two timer thresholds is proposed to accommodate the bursty data traffic characteristics of PS service. The location update and paging costs of the proposed scheme are analyzed and compared with those of the conventional scheme. We show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional scheme in terms of total cost of both location update and paging with an appropriate selection of timer thresholds.