Mobile Multimedia Communication - Systems and Networks

Mobile communication is an emerging area of research that requires input from computer science as well as from electrical engineering. However, today only very limited co-operation between computer scientists and electrical engineers can be observed with respect to the design and development of mobile communication systems. A goal of this Dagstuhl seminar is to bring together researchers from both groups and to stimulate intensive discussions among them.

Especially the following topics are of interest:

• low power system design
• hardware/software co-design for mobile multimedia systems
• multimedia applications over wireless networks
• interworking of wired and wireless networks
• multimedia support within the communication system (resource handling and reservation, Quality-of-Service management)
• transport and network protocols in hybrid networks
• active networking in the presence of mobile communications
• media access protocols (IEEE 802.11, ...)
• wireless ATM
• OFDM

It is expected that concepts for next generation systems as well as evaluations of such systems are presented. Especially presentations of practical experiments are expected. Measurements of existing systems are very important, since they form a sound bases for the development of multimedia protocols and applications for mobile communication. Parameters, such as throughput, delay, delay jitter, error rate and the like are key issues with respect to multimedia and QoS.

The discussions in the Dagstuhl seminar should especially address a homogeneous system concept, including protocols, applications, media characteristics and systems architecture. Some focus should be on resource management which comprises from all the areas mentioned above. Especially, a tight integration of "traditional" resource management, system architecture and power management is important.