Abstract
In the future, more and more Internet services will be accessed through wireless networks. Location management, which enables mobile users to gain access to various services from the wireless networks regardless of their physical locations, becomes a challenge in personal communication services (PCS) networks. Existing PCS networks (such as GSM) use databases HLR (Home Location Register) and VLR (Visitor Location Register) to support location management. In these networks, the basic location management strategy (Basic Strategy, for short) updates the HLR whenever a mobile enters a new LA (Location Area) regardless of whether the update is necessary and pages whole LA when the network needs to find a mobile. As a result, the Basic Strategy gives rise to an enormous location update cost as well as terminal paging cost. Therefore, many location management strategies have been developed to reduce costs and to improve performance. In this study, we propose a fuzzy forwarding pointer strategy (FFPS), where a fuzzy logic controller is used to dynamically adjust the length of pointer chain so as to gear location management to the changeable moving patterns of mobile terminals. Simulation results demonstrate that the FFPS outperforms the Basic Strategy in cases when a call-to-mobility ratio is low.