On the performance of sequential paging for mobile user location

Abstract

We present some results regarding the paging cost gains and the cost-delay tradeoff that can be achieved by using sequential paging to locate mobile users in cellular networks. We describe tight bounds on the average paging cost and the paging delay and quantify the intuition that greater gains are achieved when the mobile user's location probabilities are concentrated in a small portion of the location area. We also examine the impact of the errors in the location estimates on the paging cost.