Mobility management and network design for UMTS

An approach for combining mobility management and network topology optimization of UMTS access networks for location and routing area design is presented. Traffic and user mobility is estimated using results from network planning tools and short-term dynamic system-level simulations including novel mobility models. The hierarchical area structure is planned and optimized by applying results from radio and fixed network planning as well as integer programming and combinatorial optimization algorithms. Interoperability aspects between 2G and 3G networks and the possibility of including measurements and performance indicators from running networks for post-optimization and tuning are discussed.