A heuristic-based approach for minimization of inter-switch handoff cost with load balancing for optimal location area planning in a PCSN

Our work is a variant of the location area planning (LAP) problem where location areas (LA) are formed by assigning microcells of the total coverage area of a personal communication services network (PCSN) to mobile switching centers (MSC) or switches dedicated to that network. The criterion is minimization of total signaling load imposed upon the system due to the generation of handoff requests by the mobile terminals (MT) in the system and initiation of the procedure for performing successful handoff towards completion at a positive rate. The cell-to-switch assignment has been done in such a way that no switches are overloaded. Moreover, we show that loads on the switches are almost balanced even if multiple boundary crossings by an MT requests several handoffs for a single call.