Issue No. 09 - September (2008 vol. 7)
ISSN: 1536-1233
pp: 1071-1083
ABSTRACT
The problem of searching for mobile users in cellular networks is addressed in this study. Previous studies addressing this issue have focused on the problem of searching for a single user. As it is shown in this study, the problem of maximizing the expected rate of successful searches under delay and bandwidth constraints is NP-hard. {\bf When the potential locations of different users overlap, the derivation of an optimal concurrent search for many independent users from a set of optimal single user searches is NP-hard}. In reality, a cellular network has to serve many competing search requests sharing a limited bandwidth. Since the problem of maximizing the expected rate of successful searches under delay and bandwidth constraints is NP-hard, this study proposes a heuristic algorithm, that is optimal for most probable cases, and its worst case running time complexity is $O(n(\log{n} + C\log{C}))$, where $n$ is the number of mobile users that must be found, and $C$ is the number of their potential locations. {\bf The approximation ratio of the proposed search algorithm is less than 2}.
INDEX TERMS
location management, Paging, mobile, multiple, search, cellular networks.
CITATION
Zohar Naor, "Searching for Multiple Mobile Users", IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 7, no. , pp. 1071-1083, September 2008, doi:10.1109/TMC.2008.25