International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No.

1, 2012

A Dynamic HLR Location Management Scheme in Wireless Mesh Networks

Meyanand. R
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Adhiyamaan College of Engineering Hosur-635109, TamilNadu, India meyanand16@gmail.com

Ramya Dorai. D
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Adhiyamaan College of Engineering Hosur-635 109, TamilNadu, India dramyadorai@yahoo.com

Abstract - A mobility management scheme for WMNs namely, the static anchor scheme and dynamic anchor scheme. Both schemes are based can be extended to WMNs that have multiple gateways. We also investigate how catching of location information of MCs can be used to reduce the signalling cost incurred by our proposed schemes. The Random walk model is a random based mobility model used in mobility management schemes for mobile communication system. In this paper, a dynamic HLR (Home Location Register) scheme for location management in PCS (Personal Communications Service) networks is presented. The proposed scheme provides a dynamic copy of mobile terminal location information in the nearest (current) HLR database. A modified table lookup procedure is also proposed for determining the current HLR easily. It allows the location registration and call delivery to be performed efficiently. The mobility model is designed to describe the movement pattern of mobile users, and how their location, velocity and acceleration change over time. In random based mobility simulation models, the mobile nodes move randomly and freely without restrictions. To be more specific, the destination, speed and direction are all chosen randomly and independently of other nodes. Keywords: Mobility Management, Random walk model, Home location register, Personal communication services

Wireless mesh networks consists of various types of entities: gateways, mesh routers, access points (AP) and mesh clients. Gateways are the connection points to the wire-line networks. Mesh clients are the terminals users which have no or limited routing function. Wireless APs are the entities in charge of the wireless access for the mesh clients. Stationary mesh routers form a wireless multi hop backbone with long-range highspeed wireless techniques such as WiMAX. In different models a mesh node can contain one or more functional entities, eg., Mesh routers usually implement AP functionalities. When the mobile clients are stationary, with the support of backbone routing, the wireless access for them can be accomplished within a few hops. However, difficulty arises when there are needs for the mesh clients to move across the coverage area of different APs. How to maintain the ongoing connection and how to forward the downstream and upstream packets are not solved by the current standards. Mobility management consists of location management and handoff management [1]. Location management keeps track of the location information of mesh clients, through location registration and location update operations. Handoff management maintains ongoing connections of mesh clients while they are moving around and changing their points of attachment. Mobility management has been studied intensively for cellular networks and mobile IP networks. A large variety of mobility management schemes and protocols have been proposed for these types of networks over the past years. Comprehensive surveys of mobility management in cellular networks and mobile IP networks can be found [1]. Due to some significant differences in network architecture, however, mobility management schemes proposed for cellular networks and mobile

I. INTRODUCTION Wireless mesh networking have recently ++++attracted much attention as a quick and cheap solution to offer wide wireless coverage for the last-mile Internet connection which is a necessary first-step to enable pervasive mobility services. A wireless mesh network generally consists of a set of mesh nodes that interconnect with each other via wireless medium to form a wireless backbone. Some or all of the mesh nodes also serve as access points for mobile users under their coverage. One or more mesh nodes have wired connections to the Internet and function as the gateway. Compared to traditional wireless LANs the main feature of wireless mesh networks is their multi-hop wireless backbone.

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012 IP networks are generally not appropriate for WMNs. For example, the lack of centralized management facilities e.g., HLR/VLR in cellular networks and HA/FA in mobile IP networks. Personal Communication Service (PCS) networks provide wireless communication services that enable Mobile Terminals (MTs) to transfer any form of information between any locations at any time. Location management, i.e., how to track the MTs that move from place to place is a key issue in PCS. moving MT, a PCS network is partitioned into many Registration Areas (RAs). Each RA may include tens or hundreds of cells, which is a basic unit of area served by a base station (BS). Each RA is serviced by a VLR. An HLR is associated with tens or hundreds of VLRs. The service area served by an HLR is referred to as Service Area (SA). In a PCS network, there are several HLRs as shown in Fig. 1. For convenience, we call the HLR that contains the permanent data information of an MT the master HLR for the MT. The SA that is associated with the master HLR is called the master SA for the MT. When an MT moves to another new SA, the new SA that the MT resides is called the current SA. The associated HLR is called the current HLR for the MT. There are two basic operations in location management: location registration and call delivery. Location registration is the process through which system tracks the locations of MTs that move in the networks. When an MT moves far away from its master HLR, the communication costs for accessing the master HLR for both location registration and call delivery will increase dramatically. This problem leads us to consider why we cannot use the current HLR of an MT for the location management to improve the system performance.
Figure 1: A PCS Networks

As the number of PCS subscribers increase, the system overheads involved with the location management will increase beyond the capacity of the current network design. Methods for reducing the overheads are critically important for the design and implementation of PCS networks. The two-tier system of Home Location Register (HLR) and the Visitor Location Register (VLR) databases is used for the location management in PCS networks. The HLR contains the permanent data (e.g., directory number, profile information, current location, and validation period) of the MTs whose primary subscription is within the area. For each MT, it contains a pointer to the VLR to assist routing incoming calls. A VLR is associated with a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) in the networks. It contains temporary record for all MTs currently active within the service area of the MSC. The VLR retrieves information for handling calls to or from a visiting MT. To facilitate the tracking of a

In this paper, we introduce a novel dynamic HLR location management scheme for PCS networks. In the proposed scheme, a dynamic copy of location information of an MT is made in the nearest (current) HLR which can be accessed for location management. A modified table lookup procedure is also proposed for determining the current HLR easily. With the proposed scheme, an MT can always access the location data in its nearest HLR for performing location registration and call delivery. It is also easily to implement the proposed dynamic HLR location management scheme with existing signaling network for PCS networks which will be described in section IV. It is clearly shown that the proposed scheme can reduce the total cost of location registration and call delivery significantly from about 20% to even 70% comparing to the existing location management scheme. Some related works have been conducted for location management in PCS networks. A per-user location caching strategy [14] is introduced to reduce the signaling cost for call

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012 delivery by reusing the cached information about a called MTs location from a previous call. The performance of this scheme depends on the probability that the cached information is valid. A user profile replication scheme is proposed in [25]. Based on this scheme, user profiles are replicated at selected locations such that the call delivery delay can be reduced. The replication, however, is made by a centralized system which must collect the mobility and calling parameters of the whole user population from time to time. Dynamic hierarchical database architecture [9] is introduced for location management in PCS networks. However, a new level of databases called the directory registers is added to the PCS networks which increases the cost of systems in their approach. A local anchor scheme [8], [28] is proposed to reduce the accessing messages to the master HLR by using a local anchor for an MT, where the local anchor acts as a VLR. In the local anchor scheme, only the master HLR is used in the existing scheme. The location registration messages can be sent to the local anchor instead of the master HLR. For the call delivery, it is still necessary to access the master HLR to have the point of local anchor, and then access the VLR for the callee through the local anchor. The local anchor, however, is selected dynamically and the problem of how to determine the local anchors for moving MTs optimally remains open. In our proposed scheme uses the current HLR to reduce the signaling costs to enhance the system performance. We can also optimally select the current HLR easily based on the location of an MT. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION We consider the PCS network shown in Fig. 1. In the PCS network, a given geographically serviced area is divided into cells. In each cell, there is a base station (BS) which is used to communicate with mobile users over preassigned radio frequencies. Groups of several cells are connected to a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) through which the calls are then routed to the telephone networks. MSC is a telephone exchange specially assembled for mobile applications. In current PCS networks, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Public Switched Data Network (PSDN) is used as the backbone wire line network. The area serviced by a MSC is called a Registration Area (RA). A group of RAs compose a Service Area (SA). Each SA is serviced
Figure 2: The existing location registration scheme

by an HLR. A PCS network includes several SAs and thus several HLRs. For convenience, we call the HLR that contains the permanent data information of an MT the master HLR for the MT. The SA that is associated with the master HLR is called the master SA for the MT. When an MT moves to anther new SA, the new SA that the MT resides is called the current SA. The associated HLR is called the current HLR for the MT. III. EXISTING LOCATION MANAGEMENT We first examine the existing location management which includes location registration scheme and the call delivery scheme, which are specified under the IS-41 standard as follows (also see Fig. 2). In the IS-41, the (master) HLR knows the exact MSC where its associated MTs reside.

A. The existing location registration scheme 1) The MT detects that it has entered a new RA and sends a location update message to the new MSC through the base station. 2) The MSC updates its associated VLR indicating that the MT is residing in its area and sends allocation registration message to the master HLR of the MT. 3) The message is routed to a STP which determines the master HLR of the called MT from its Mobile Identification Number (MIN) by a table lookup procedure called Global Title Translation

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012 (GTT). The location message is then forwarded to the master HLR. 4) The master HLR updates its record indicating the current serving MSC of the MT and sends a registration acknowledgment message to the new MSC. 5) The master HLR sends a registration cancellation message to the old MSC. 6) The old MSC deletes the record of the MT in its associated VLR and sends a cancellation acknowledgment message to the master HLR. B. The existing call delivery scheme The existing procedure of call delivery is described as follows (also see Fig. 3). 1) A call is initiated by an MT and the base station forwards the call initiation signal to the MSC. 7) The calling MSC sets up a connection to the called MSC using this TLDN. IV. PROPOSED DYNAMIC HLR LOCATION MANAGEMENT SCHEME With the existing location management, only the master HLR of MTs is accessed to locate the VLRs. There is nothing to do with the current (i.e., the nearest) HLR with the existing location management. As the number of PCS subscribers increases continually, the accesses to the master HLR and the associated volume of the signaling messages will increase explosively. When an MT locates far away from its master HLR, the communication costs for accessing the master HLR for both the location registration and call delivery with the existing scheme will increase dramatically. The problem with the existing scheme lead us to propose a novel dynamic HLR location management scheme costs of location management, especially the access cost to the HLR databases. In the propose dynamic HLR location management scheme, The HLR/VLR database architecture and the signaling system remain unchanged while additional operation of making a copy between HLRs is added when an MT moves to another SA. In the proposed dynamic HLR management scheme, when an MT moves from its master SA to a new SA, the new current HLR obtained a copy of the data about the MT from the old current HLR and send an acknowledgment message to the old current HLR as shown in Fig. 4. If the old HLR is the master HLR, it does nothing with the acknowledgment message; otherwise, it deletes the record of the MT in the old current HLR. With the proposed scheme, an MT can always use the location data in its nearest (current) HLR for performing location registration and call delivery. Another key issue in the proposed scheme is to route the location management message to the current HLR for a specific MT. In the existing location registration and call delivery schemes, the STP in the signaling network is used to switch the location management message to the master HLR through the GTT table lookup procedure. For the proposed scheme, we slightly modify the GTT table lookup procedure for the STP so that the STP switches the location management message from an MSC to the associate HLR which is in the same SA of the MSC for the location registration. For the call delivery procedure, the STP at first checked if

Figure 3: The existing scheme of call delivery

2) The MSC sends a location request message to the master HLR of the called MT through a STP where GTT is performed. 3) The location request is forwarded to the master HLR. 4) The master HLR sends a location request message to the MSC serving the called MT. 5) The MSC determines the cell location of the called MT and assigns it a Temporary Location Directory Number (TLDN). The MSC then sends this TLDN to the master HLR. 6) The master HLR forwards the TLDN to the calling MSC.

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012 the caller (an MT that initiates a call) is in the same SA of the callee (an MT that receives the call). This can be conducted by checking if there is a record (i.e., a pointer to the MSC of the callee) in the associate HLR of the MSC of the caller. If there exists a record in the associate HLR, the HLR is either the current HLR or the master HLR of the callee, which can be used to find the MSC of the callee. This can be conducted by checking if there is a record (i.e., a pointer to the MSC of the callee) in the associate HLR of the MSC of the caller. If there exists a record in the associate HLR, the HLR is either the current HLR or the master HLR of the callee, which can be used to find the MSC of the callee. If there is not the record in the associate HLR, the caller is located in a different SA than the callee. In the case, the existing MT-dependent table lookup procedure is applied to find the master HLR of the callee, and then find the current HLR of the callee. The modified GTT table lookup procedure is especially effective when the caller and callee are in the same SA for the call delivery since calls are more likely to be local calls instead of remote calls. With the copy of data about a specific MT in the new current HLR and the modified GTT table lookup procedure, we have the following proposed location registration and call delivery schemes. A. The proposed location registration scheme The proposed location registration scheme is presented as follows. 1) The MT detects that it has entered a new RA and sends a location update message to the associated new MSC through the base station. 2) The new MSC updates its associated VLR indicating that the MT is residing in its area and sends a location registration message to the STP in the signaling network. 3) The message is routed to the associate HLR of the new MSC through the STP by the modified MSC dependent GTT table lookup procedure. Note that the associate HLR is also the current (nearest) HLR for the MT. 4) The current HLR updates its record indicating the current serving (new) MSC of the MT and sends a registration acknowledgment message to the new MSC. If the MT stays in the same SA, proceed to the next step; otherwise (i.e., the MT moved into a new SA), go to Step 7.

Figure 4: Copy record of an MT to the new current HLR

5) The current HLR sends a registration cancellation message to the old MSC. 6) The old MSC deletes the record of the MT in its associate VLR and sends a cancellation acknowledgment message to the current HLR, stop. 7) (For the case that the MT moved into a new SA) the new current HLR sends a message to the old current HLR informing the movement of the MT. 8) The old current HLR sends its record about the MT to the new current HLR. It also sends a registration cancellation message to the old MSC. 9) The old MSC deletes the record of the MT in its associate VLR and sends a cancellation acknowledgment message to the old current HLR. 10) If the new current HLR is the master HLR, it just sends the old current HLR a registration acknowledgment message; otherwise it sends both the old current HLR and the master HLR the registration acknowledgment message. 11) For the old HLR, if it is the master HLR, it updates its record pointing to the new current HLR; otherwise, it deletes the record of the MT. 12) For the master HLR, if it is the new current HLR, it does nothing; otherwise, it updates its record pointing to the new current HLR.

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012 HLR of the called MT, and then to find the current HLR of the called MT. 3) The location request is forwarded to the current HLR of the called MT. 4) The current HLR sends a location request message to the MSC serving the called MT.

Figure 5: The proposed scheme of location registration

Comparing to the existing location registration scheme, there are some steps more (i.e., steps 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12) in the proposed scheme which make a copy of the record of the MT to the new current HLR when the MT moves into a new SA. Fig. 5 shows the location registration process when the MT moves into a new SA and the old HLR is the master HLR. In step 3 of the proposed scheme, the current HLR of the MT is identified directly by the STP using the modified table lookup procedure. Since the modified table lookup procedure could be easier to implement than the origin table lookup procedure, the cost of determining the current HLR is smaller to the cost of determining the master HLR. For convenience, we assume that cost of determining the current HLR is the same to the cost of determining the master HLR. The proposed scheme enables that the MT always is serviced by its current HLR and then reduces the cost of accessing HLR which we will show more later by performance study. B. The proposed call delivery scheme The proposed call delivery scheme is presented as follows. 1) A call is initiated by an MT (caller) and the base station forwards the call initiation signal to the MSC. 2) The MSC sends a location request message to the associate HLR. If the caller is in the same SA, the associate HLR is used as the current HLR for the HLR; otherwise, the existing GTT table lookup procedure is used to find the master

Figure 6: The proposed scheme of call delivery

5) The MSC determines the cell location of the called MT and assigns it a Temporary Location Directory Number (TLDN). The MSC then sends this TLDN to the current HLR. 6) The current HLR forwards the TLDN to the calling MSC. 7) The calling MSC sets up a connection to the called MSC using this TLDN. In the proposed call delivery scheme, the current HLR is accessed which can reduce the cost of call delivery caused by roaming significantly especially when the calling MT and the called MT are in the same SA as shown in Fig. 6. V. CONCLUSION A novel dynamic HLR management scheme for location management in PCS networks is presented. The idea of the proposed method is simple and effectively. It provides a dynamic copy of location information of mobile terminals in the nearest HLR database. A modified table lookup procedure is also proposed for determining the current HLR easily. With the proposed scheme, an MT can always access the location data in its nearest HLR for performing location registration

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012 and call delivery efficiently, and then reduces the signaling and database access traffic. The architecture and the functions of existing network elements, such as the HLRs, and the VLRs remain unchanged. An analytical model is also presented to study the performance of location management methods. By applying the analytical model, we conduct the performance comparison between the proposed location management scheme and the existing one. The performance study shows that the proposed method can reduce the total costs of location registration and call delivery comparing to the existing location management scheme significantly from about 20% to even 70%. REFERENCES
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