Evolving cellular automata for location management in mobile computing networks

Location management is a very important and complex problem in mobile computing. There is a need to develop algorithms that could capture this complexity yet can be easily implemented and used to solve a wide range of location management scenarios. The paper investigates the use of cellular automata (CA) combined with genetic algorithms to create an evolving parallel reporting cells planning algorithm. In the reporting cell location management scheme, some cells in the network are designated as reporting cells; mobile terminals update their positions (location update) upon entering one of these reporting cells. To create such an evolving CA system, cells in the network are mapped to cellular units of the CA and neighborhoods for the CA is selected. GA is then used to discover efficient CA transition rules. The effectiveness of the GA and of the discovered CA rules is shown for a number of test problems.