Clustering databases for user location management in PCS network

Abstract

Personal Communication Service (PCS) network is the integration of cellular Network and conventional wired network. To support user mobility, the location information of the mobile stations (MSs) should be constantly tracked using a database. The widespread deployment of PCS will lead to a tremendous increase in the number of updates and queries to the location database. The centralized stand-alone Home Location Register (HLR) in GSM can be a potential bottleneck. Besides, in case of the location database failure, incoming calls may be lost Replicating a HLR cart increase the capacity and reliability of the HLR. However replicating the HLR will cause extra cost because the location update must be executed in each replica. In this paper; we propose a clustering technique to reduce the cost of location updating in replicated HLR. The performance evaluation model is also presented.