Increased handover performance in 2G and 3G wireless systems based on combined mobile-location and area

Localization of mobile terminals is one of the hottest topics, both for service providers and cellular operators. A large number of value added services can be offered to the users, increasing subscriber satisfaction, on the other hand network performance should be guaranteed to support these applications. In existing cellular systems handover is one of the procedures that causes serious network shortcomings. This procedure is much more complicated in next generation systems (UMTS) and is of great interest for investigation and optimization. We present a method of exploiting user´s location in order to assist the handover procedure, minimizing the failure probability and the signaling overhead. Our main concern is to provide a mechanism transparent from the location server and increase network performance and stability.