Methods for concurrent paging, in a cellular system having a number of users,
where the users are paged to determine a location of each user, are disclosed.
The paging from one cell to one of the users occurs within one of a number of time
slots. The time slot in which one of the users is paged from one of the cells is
a characteristic of that cell and that user. An array encompassing the totality
of the characteristics time slots constitutes a search schedule. One method comprises
minimizing a characteristic function of paging performance, the function depending
on the search schedule and the probability of finding a user in a cell, and, determining,
from the minimization of the characteristic function, the search schedule. Two
other methods for determining a search schedule, which are more computationally
efficient and which reduce the paging cost, the simple heuristic and the conditional
probability heuristic, are disclosed.