Modeling location management in wireless networks with generally distributed parameters

In the wireless mobile networks, location update (LU) and paging are two basic operations in the framework of mobility management. The trade-off analysis between LU and paging is traditionally performed under the assumption that the key variables follow exponential distribution. However, recent work showed that such assumptions may be incorrect. In this paper, by introducing the concept of LU inter-arrival time and additionally relaxing the assumptions for the inter-service time, cell residence time and LU inter-arrival time, we present an analytical technique to develop the closed-form formula for the signaling cost applicable to different location management schemes. Specifically, the result is applied to the static scheme and the dynamic movement-based scheme to demonstrate the general applicability. Illustrative numerical examples are given to compare the location management scheme performance based on the cell characteristics.