Improvement of the Performance of Database Access Operations in Cellular Networks

Reducing the traffic volume of location updating is a critical issue for tracking mobile users in a cellular network. Besides, when user x wants to communicate with user y, the location of user y must be extracted from databases. Therefore, one or more databases must be accessed for updating, recording, deleting, and searching. Thus, the most important criterion of a location tracking algorithm is to provide a small database access time. In this paper, we propose a new location tracking scheme, called Virtual Overlap Region with Forwarding Pointer (VF), and compare the number of database accesses required for updating, deleting, and searching operations for the proposed scheme and other approaches proposed for cellular networks. Our VF scheme like Overlap Region scheme reduces the updating information when a user frequently moves in boundaries of LAs. Unlike Overlap Region, the VF can reduce number of database accesses for searching users' information.