GBL: Group-based location updating in mobile environment

Conventionally, each mobile host frequently reports its current location to a location server in a mobile environment, termed individual-based approach. With a large mobile host population, the demand on the wireless uplink channel becomes overwhelm. In this paper, we propose a group-based scheme to alleviate the demand on the uplink channel. With our scheme, nearby mobile hosts, possessing similar mobility, are clustered. Only one host in a cluster reports collectively their locations to the server. This approach reduces the uplink traffic from mobile hosts to the server since individual update messages are aggregated. We propose a dynamic group formation scheme, and the strategies to report host locations within a cluster and to report a cluster location to the server. A simulation model is built to evaluate the effectiveness of our scheme. The results show our scheme outperforms individual-based approach, particularly under dense population scenarios.