Ant colony prediction by using sectorized diurnal mobility model for handover management in PCS networks Ahmed I. Saleh 1 • Mohamed S. Elkasas 1 • Alyaa A. Hamza 1 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Recently, mobile phones are extremely used in lifestyle. Historical records of mobile users (MUs) play an important role in predicting future movements of new visitors of the underlying registration area. Handover (handoff) is one of important quality of service (QoS) parameter that affects the continuity of the call when MUs move from a cell to its neighbors in the same registration area (RA). In this paper, a novel ant based Algorithm, has been introduced, which is called Ant Prediction Algorithm (APA). The main target of APA is to reduce handover impact on the performance of personal communication service (PCS) networks. To accomplish such aim, APA tries to minimize the number of dropped calls by predicting the long-term movement of MUs based on the Sectored Diurnal Mobility Model (SDMM). APA consists of two Parts, namely; (i) the Ant Prediction Engine (APE), which relies on the movement history of the other MUs to predict the future movement of the considered MU, and (ii) the SDMM design, which predicts the exact future sector and cell of the considered MU. Simulations have been pre- sented to validate the proposed scheme in terms of pre- diction accuracy and handoff blocking probability. Keywords Personal communications networks Á Handover schemes Á Prediction theory Á Ant colony 1 Introduction In personal communication service (PCS) networks, two ordinarily used standards, the EIA/TIA Interim common- place in North America and the Global System for Mobile Communications in Europe (GSM). Both standards parti- tion their coverage areas in a variety of location areas (LA), every consisting of a bunch of cells. With the growing request for brand new services and utilities, PCS networks ought to support calls with varied traffic options and varied Qos guarantees. Additionally, very different completely wireless networks and technologies stay really which will satisfy different desires and needs of MUs. In the procedure PCS networks, mobility management deals with the tracking, storage, maintenance, and retrieval of mobile location information. In real-life situation, Mobile Users (MUs) principally notice their destinations a priori, their movement isn’t fully random. Hence, valuable information can be concluded from the previously registered paths of MUs that were passed through the underlying network service area (SA). In PCS Network, a SA is divided into a variety of reg- istration areas (RAs), each RA is subdivided into various cells. A cell is that the communication space wrapped by one Base station (BS). BSs within the same RA are con- nected to at least one Mobile Switching Center (MSC) that may be a dedicated telephone switch for PCS applications. BSs are usually static unit and are connected through land links to the MSC serving their RA [1]. Each SA is served by a global database called Home Location Register (HLR), which includes the records of all users’ data & Alyaa A. Hamza Alyaashams12@yahoo.com Ahmed I. Saleh aisaleh@yahoo.com Mohamed S. Elkasas msmksasy@gmail.com 1 Computer Engineering and Systems Department, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, P.O. Box 35516, Mansoura, Egypt 123 Wireless Netw DOI 10.1007/s11276-017-1590-2