Analyzing Distance-Based Registration with Two Location Areas: A Semi-Markov Process Approach

Abstract

In order to connect an incoming call to the user equipment (UE) in a mobile communication network, the location information of the UE must be always kept in the network database. Therefore, the efficiency of the location registration method of reporting new location information to a mobile communication network whenever the location information of the UE changes directly affects the performance of the radio channel, which is a limited resource in a mobile communication network. This study deals with distance-based registration (DBR). DBR does not cause the ping-pong phenomenon known to be a main problem in zone-based registration. It shows good performance when assuming a random walk mobility model. To improve the performance of the original DBR with one location area (1D), a DBR with two location areas (2D) was proposed. It is known that 2D is better than 1D in most cases. However, unlike 1D, an accurate mathematical model for 2D has not been presented in previous studies, raising questions about whether an accurate performance comparison has been performed. In this study, we present an accurate mathematical model based on the semi-Markov process for performance analysis of 2D. We compared performances of 1D and 2D using the proposed mathematical model. Various numerical results showed that 2D with two-step paging was superior to 1D in most cases. However, when simultaneous paging was applied to 2D, 1D was better than 2D in most cases. In real situations, optimal performance can be achieved by reflecting the network situation in real time and dynamically changing the operating method using a better-performing model among these two methods.