STATE OF THE ART, CHALLENGES AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS 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
Abstract
Wireless technology advances over the last few years have led to a wide use of WPAN, WLAN
and WMAN. WiFi and Bluetooth technologies have been widely used in recent years (homes,
enterprises, university campus, indoors cars …) and WiMax and UWB would be the next
advance in communications. The convergence between Telecommunication and Computer
Communication has led to powerful multimedia communication frameworks to implement Real
Time Multimedia services. Terminal devices have been transformed to mobile phones with WiFi
and Bluetooth, cold processors, a considerable amount of main memory but a reduced display.
An important issue for all wireless technologies is the mobile terminals sudden loss of coverage
during communication when they leave their wireless range. As a result, real time
communications can be subject to disruptions during an important time interval - a serious
problem for real time communications or a user headache for firm real time multimedia
communication. The presentation will include: an analysis of the present convergence between
Multimedia Computer Communications and Telecommunications; Reviewing of interesting QoS
properties of WiFi, WiMax, Bluetooth and UWB technologies; Challenges of wireless real time
multimedia communications; Different approaches to solve the sudden loss of coverage for
multimedia real time communication; and future advances of wireless networks and services.
Biography
Dr. Elsa María Macías López is an associate professor of Telecommunications at Las Palmas
de Gran Canaria University, Department of Telematic 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 Processes. She received her M.S. in Telecommunications (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 a 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, since 1998. He is an expert reviewer of
research projects for the Spanish ministries. In 1990 he started working in systolic computing at
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, multimedia collaborative
frameworks, and wireless and sensor networks. His current research efforts have focused on
the management of wireless channel disconnections to prevent abrupt endings of multimedia
applications. He is author and co-author of several papers in the above topics. He has directed
and participated in several European, Spanish, Regional and Enterprise research projects.