STATE OF THE ART AND CHALLENGES FOR WIRELESS MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS

Elsa Mª Macías-López, Associate Professor

Álvaro Suárez Sarmiento, Full Professor

Departamento de Ingeniería Telemática

Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Spain

{emacias, asuarez}@dit.ulpgc.es

Wireless technology advances over the last few years lead to a wide use of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). There are a lot of WLAN standards and technologies in our days. Among these standards the Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) one is the most used currently in different scenarios: Homes, enterprises, university campuses and so on. The WiMax standard is named to substitute the WiFi for long distances and to provide coverage in an entire small city. This is very promising nowadays. Finally, Ultra Wide Band (UWB) is a very promising standard that could be used to communicate multimedia information in short distances. UWB could be included in 3G and 4G devices to replace the current Bluetooth standard. An important fact is that these standards could be used for computer communication and also traditional telecommunications: In this way, the range of application for these technologies could be greater in the next years. This could be true if the communication convergence between computers communications and telecommunications will be true in the next years.

It is important to notice that all WLAN technologies and standards suffer the same problem: the terminals suddenly loss its coverage while they are communicating as they go out of wireless range. Due to this, real time communication could be broken during some important interval of time. This could be a disaster in real time communications (sensors) or a user headache (firm real time multimedia communication). This problem is not easy to solve.

The focus of the this tutorial will include more specifically the following topics:

• Review interesting properties of WLAN technologies.
• Analysis of the current convergence between computer communications and Telecommunications.
• Last advances in WiFi, UWB and WiMax standards.
• Introduction to real time multimedia communication in wireless networks.
• Different approximations to solve the sudden loss of coverage for multimedia real time communication.

This tutorial is for students, faculty and engineers interested in wireless networking. The main focus is on description of problems and solutions to sudden loss of coverage while the terminals are communicating relevant information. We will review the main characteristics of various WLAN standards. The attendee is expected to have basic understanding of computer networking and familiarity with wireless and multimedia communications.

This tutorial is interesting because some practical wireless technologies will be reviewed and also some important not currently solved research issues will be introduced.

Dr. Elsa María Macías López is an associate professor of Telecommunications at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University, Department of Telematics Engineering, Spain. She received her Ph.D. in Telecommunications (2001) from Las Palmas of Gran Canaria University for her work on Parallel Computing on a LAN-WLAN Cluster Controlling at Runtime the Variation of the Number of Proccesses. She received her M.S. in Telecomunications (1997) from the same University for her work on Parallelization of Diffuse IR Radiation System Simulation for Indoor Applications. Her research interests are in parallel and distributed computing and infrastructure wireless networks for collaborative computing. Her current research efforts have focused on the management of wireless channel disconnections to prevent abrupt endings of applications. She has published about 8 papers in refereed journals, 40 papers in refereed conferences, 1 paper in Spanish magazine, one educational book and co-editor of one book. She is member of Program & Organizing Committees & Chair sessions for several international and Spanish conferences. She has collaborated in several research projects. Professor Macías teaches telecommunications at the beginning, advanced, and graduate levels, and advises graduate theses in the area of wireless communications and parallel and distributed computing.

Dr. Alvaro Suarez Sarmiento is Full Professor of Telecommunications, University of Las Palmas de Gran, Canaria, Spain. He is the Head of the Telematic Engineering Department at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, from 1998. He is Member of the Experts Commission of research of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria from 1999-2002. He in 1990 started working in systolic computing in the Technical University of Catalonia. Then he turned his attention to network computing and heterogeneous computing in 1994 when he returned to the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria where he founded the Concurrency and Architecture Group (GAC). His research interests are in parallel and heterogeneous distributed computing, infrastructure wireless networks for collaborative computing and collaborative frameworks. His current research efforts have focused on the management of wireless channel disconnections to prevent abrupt endings of applications. Professor Suarez teaches telecommunications at the beginning, advanced, and graduate levels, and advises graduate theses in the area of wireless communications and parallel and heterogeneous distributed computing. He also gives lectures at european universities. The Multimedia and Ubiquitous Wireless Access Networks and Services conference was lectured at University Ca’ Foscari di Venezia (May 2005).