A crossing-tier location update/paging scheme in hierarchical cellular networks

Location update/paging strategies have been widely studied in the traditional single-tier cellular networks. We propose and evaluate a novel crossing-tier location update/paging scheme that can be used in a hierarchical macrocell/microcell cellular network. Location update is proceeded only in the macrocell tier, where a location area (LA) is made up by larger macrocells. A mobile user will stay in such a LA for longer time. Therefore, the cost on location update can be reduced due to the decreased frequency of location update. To reduce the paging delay, the paged mobile user will be searched in the macrocell tier only when the paging load is not high. Otherwise, it will be searched in the microcell tier, where a sequential searching method is applied. The operation for the scheme is simple, as the macrocell/microcell cellular network has the advantage because a mobile user can receive a signal from both a microcell and the overlaid macrocell. Analytical models have been built for cost and delay evaluation. Numerical results show that, at relatively low cost, the crossing-tier scheme also achieves low paging delay.