Due to the great success and enormous impact of IP networks, In- ternet
access (such as sending and receiving e-mails) and web brows- ing have
become the ruling paradigm for next generation wireless systems. On the
other hand, great technological and commercial success of services and
applications is being witnessed in mobile wire- less communications with
examples of cellular, pes voice telephony and wireless LANs. The service
paradigm has thus shifted from the conventional voice service to
seamlessly integrated high quality mul- timedia transmission over
broadband wireless mobile networks. The multimedia content may include
data, voice, audio, image, video and so on. With availability of more
powerful portable devices, such as PDA, portable computer and cellular
phone, coupled with the easier access to the core network (using a
mobile device), the number of mobile users and the demand for
multimedia-based applications is increasing rapidly. As a result, there
is an urgent need for a sys- tem that supports heterogeneous multimedia
services and provides seamless access to the desired resources via
wireless connections. Therefore, the convergence of multimedia
communication and wireless mobile networking technologies into the next
generation wireless multimedia (WMM) networks with the vision of
"anytime, anywhere, anyform" information system is the certain trend in
the foreseeable future. However, successful combination of these two
technologies presents many challenges such as available spectral
bandwidth, energy efficiency, seamless end-to-end communication,
robustness, security, etc.
