Mobility management in global wireless communication networks

Abstract

Several issues have become important due to recent developments in communication devices and services, especially with increase in wireless and wireline devices and networking options. These are, congestion in area codes, number portability, need to support intelligent networking, wireless-wireline integration, and demand for new user services. For meeting the requirements needed to overcome the associated problems, new numbering schemes are being proposed. Such schemes would not only relieve the extra burden on conventional geographical area codes due to the addition of vast numbers of wireless units, but also provide additional implementation benefits. Such schemes would also make it possible to associate multiple devices with a person, and multiple persons with a device, while giving people the option to have a single point where they can define who can reach them, at what device, and at what times. The proposed scheme, termed Globally Unique Portable Numbering (GUPN), uses data compression to achieve a format which has the same number of digits as the North American Numbering Plan and offers easy integration into current telephone numbering. An addressing scheme is also proposed for fixed components of communication systems and for reporting current locations of mobile devices. We call this the Globally Unique Fixed Location Numbering (GUFLN) addressing for fixed components. A performance analysis of the proposed scheme is conducted in comparison with existing schemes by considering the following criteria---number congestion with increase in number of persons and devices, amount of data transmitted and stored, and call routing and location update costs. Further studies are conducted using a queuing theory framework for evaluating a variety of possible database architectures with different levels of data replication for implementation of this person-based numbering scheme. Delays in query and update operations are used as the performance metrics for four such representative database architectures. The practical issues arising from implementation considerations are also discussed with possible solutions. This scheme is expected to offer contributions towards Number Portability (NP), Wireless Intelligent Networks (WIN), and wireless-wireline integration.