An activity-based mobility model and location management simulation framework

Abstract

To cope with an increasing number of subscribers, modern cellular telecommunication networks have been employing smaller, lower-power cells. The smaller diameter and larger number of these cells, however, result.in increased signaling requirements for location management purposes. Several location management schemes have been proposed to improve the performance of such networks, but a fair assessment and comparison of their performance is difftcult without a realistic mobility model, since the performance of location management schemes depends considerably on subscriber mobility patterns. This paper discusses a stochastic mobility model based on daily activity patterns, providing a realistic balance between completely deterministic and completely random mobility models. The mobility model is implemented within a Java simulation framework, which permits flexible implementations of mobility models and location management algorithms for direct and objective comparisons.