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Introduction
Digital mobile communications is one of the great success stories of recent years, offering people levels of mobility and services never available before. The new 3G services will push mobile even further, opening up opportunities for true broadband mobile services.
This is not the end of the road for mobile, however. On the contrary, we are still only at the beginning of the mobile revolution. Already the requirements for the next generation of mobile and wireless communications technology are emerging.
Future systems must put user needs centre stage - seamlessly integrating the many different communication systems we see emerging today so as to deliver personalised enhanced services to users. In addition, they will require open interfaces and architectures to allow different players to inter-work and offer new services. Such an open approach will be essential for players to compete in a market where users are increasingly mobile and their requirements continually changing. Digital rights management and content management will also be important considerations.
Future mobile and wireless networks will need to combine different access networks and technologies - satellite as well as terrestrial - and get them to work together so as to optimise different services requirements and operational conditions. This brings many new research challenges: in particular solving interoperability issues across multiple networks and a variety of connected devices.
We will need new solutions to accommodate a wide range of requirements on data rate, quality of service, security, availability and price according to users' expectations.
This brochure describes IST research on Mobile and Wireless Communications, showing the integrated nature of European research in this domain. It presents profiles of specific research areas holding a promising future, together with selected project descriptions to exemplify and illustrate key on-going MW image005 research and technology development.
Research here aims to enable users to access advanced services and applications in the most optimal way catering for different services requirements and operational environments. These systems may include the personal level (personal, body area/ad hoc networks), the local/home level (W-LAN, UWB), the cellular level (GPRS, UMTS), and the wider area level (DxB-T, BWA). A satellite overlay network (e.g. S-DMB) complements the resulting access landscape. The work aims to arrive at a consolidated European approach to technology, systems and services, including location-based services, as well as contributions to standards and future spectrum requirements.
The brochure is one of six in The Networked Future series, describing European funded research for Network and Communication Technologies
| View of download the complete brochure (PDF, 896KB) |
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| Read or download the General brochure (PDF, 1.644KB) |
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This book is one of a series of six which correspond to the six strategic objectives:
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| Paper copies | A limited number of printed copies are available (the pack includes the introduction and all six specific booklets). If you wish to receive copies please send us an email mentioning the key word INFSO.D Brochure, the number of copies and the address. |