A Study for Location Update Cost in a Femtocell Network

The indoor femtocell technology (known as femto BSs) with low power and low cost is proposed to provide comprehensive indoor wireless converge of macro BSs, which is known as the femtocell network. The Location Area ID for a femtocell is different from that for the macrocell that covers the femtocell, which results in frequent location update procedure (i.e., the location update cost increases) when the Mobile Station has a significant level of mobility between femtocells and macrocells. We propose the Cell Priority Transition (CPT) mechanism to reduce the location update cost for the femtocell network. The simulation experiments and analysis are conducted to investigate the performance of the CPT mechanism. Our study shows that the proposed CPT mechanism significantly reduces the location update cost for femtocell networks.