Mobility Management in MAP

Mobility management happens to be a very important feature in MAP ( Mobile Application Part ).
This is how Wikipedia explains mobility management.
"The aim of mobility management is to track where the subscribers are, allowing calls, SMS and other mobile phone services to be delivered to them."

Mobility management is an essential feature because as the person who is accessing the mobile service moves around, the service should remain.Mobility management in MAP can be further broken
into five more sections.

These are

• Location management
• Handover MSC-MSC during a call
• Authentication and security
• IMEI - mobile equipment id queries
• Subscriber management

Location management is mainly about location updates of the subscribers.

The above flow shows how location management is done in MAP.

SendIdentification operation : used by the new MSC/VLR that sees a
new mobile in its area to request information about the user from the
previous VLR.
UpdateLocation operation :to tell about the change of
responsibility to the HLR of that user once the new VLR takes responsibility
CancelLocation operation : This is for the old VLR to let it know that it can remove its record of the user from its database.
PurgeMS operation : VLR looses track of a mobile it was responsible for. The mobile’s battery may have gone flat or mobile was switched off.

Handover MSC-MSC during a call

When the mobile user keeps moving during a call, the MSC that he is connected to also keeps changing, this needs to be handled also.

Security Operations

Security is assured in MAP by checking the IMEI which is unique for a phone.

Subscriber Management

This is handled using commands such as InsertSubscriberManagement and DeleteSubscriberManagement.As and when the subscribers join and leave services
the stored details in the HLR and VLR.