A multi-layer location management scheme that bridges the best static scheme and the best dynamic scheme

As more applications in the world of computing go mobile, keeping track of mobile application users becomes more important. Location management deals with keeping track of mobile users. Based on the dependence on the mobility of mobile users, a location management strategy can be characterized into static or dynamic. The location area scheme is the most popularly used static scheme whereas the distance-based scheme has been proved to be the best among the dynamic schemes. This paper proposes a new multilayer location management scheme as a generalization of the location area scheme. The proposed scheme bridges the location area scheme and the distance-based scheme. The multi-layer scheme becomes the distance-based scheme if a saturated number of layers are employed. The paper further compares the performance between the location area scheme and the distance-based scheme through the multi-layer scheme.