The Virtual Overlap Region with Forwarding Pointer (VORFP) Technique for Tracking Mobile Users in Personal Communication Systems

Reducing the volume of location updates and cost of searching for location information are two important issues for tracking mobile users in personal communication systems. Many approaches have been proposed to improve both the location update traffic and searching costs. Some of these approaches can reduce access cost and some other approaches can reduce the location update cost and location update rate. In this paper, we shall propose a new approach for reducing both location update cost and searching cost (for finding mobile users location information). The new scheme called Virtual Overlap Region with Forwarding Pointer (VORFP) uses the forwarding pointer and the virtual overlap region concepts. The virtual overlap region technique is a good method for reducing the location update traffic, especially when a user backs and forths between adjacent cells. Our performance evaluations show that VORFP can significantly reduce searching cost and update cost.