Paging Overhead Reduction for WiMAX Networks

Implementing idle mode for the mobile station (MS) in a mobile communication system results in two kinds of control overhead: paging message overhead and location update overhead. In this paper, we propose a mobility-based paging mechanism which utilizes the MS´s mobility information to reduce the number of unnecessary broadcast paging messages. To further reduce the paging message overhead, instead of using MAC address, a shorter identifier called paging identifier is used in the paging message. Our simulation results show that by applying both methods, a great amount of paging message overhead can be reduced.