Hierarchical Group Location Tracking for Transportation Systems in Wireless Personal Communication Networks

A hierarchical group location tracking (HGLT) based on grouplocation tracking and hierarchical location update is proposed toreduce the location management cost for terrestrialtransportation systems (TSs) in personal communication networks. A global group location update (GGLU) and a local group locationupdate (LGLU) are performed to provide an accurate position for auser. The GGLU informs a virtual visitor location register of thecurrently camped-on location area and the LGLU informs the servingmobile switching center of the currently camped-on cell. Althoughthe LGLU is done each time a TS moves into a new cell, it causessmall increment in the signaling cost due to localized updates andgroup updates compared with the previous group location trackingscheme. The proposed scheme significantly reduces the paging costbecause the scheme pages only a camped-on cell using the LGLUinformation. Compared with the previous schemes, the HGLT reducesthe location management cost, and it is more efficient as thecost for paging a cell increases.