Abstract My research work focus on mobility management for mobile satellite communication system. Mobility management takes care of position of mobile terminals when in idle and active modes . The mobility functions can be categorize into two main parts called handoff and location management . Handover happens, in order to provide continuity of a call and support a specified QoS, when users moves from coverage area of one base station to another base station or from one spotbeam to another spotbeam. Location management however, handles tracking of mobile terminals and routing the incoming call to the mobiles.
Location information is maintained and used by the network for call routing purposes.
Due to the mobility of the users, this information should be updated regularly. This requires Location update and registration process by the mobiles. Since this data only contains the area identification, where user can be found, the network performs a paging operation to alert a mobile of an incoming call. Location updating technique, location area size, paging area size and methods and database management need to be optimized together to minimize the undesirable effects on radio, network and available satellite and terminal power, based on user's mobility and incoming and out going call rate characteristics. Therefore the research work here concentrates on optimising the mobility management resources.