TUTORIAL 1 - Challenges and Solutions of Multimedia Service Disruptions in Wireless Networks

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Speaker

Elsa María Macías LópezLas Palmas de Gran Canaria University, Spain.

Lenght

8 hours

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 …). While the first technology is widely used to connect mobile gadgets the second is widely used to build spontaneous wireless networks and to access Internet. The convergence between Telecommunication and Computer Communication has led to powerful multimedia communication frameworks to implement Real Time Multimedia services. A plethora of mobile terminal devices like mobile phones every day help their users to use multimedia services. These devices include powered sensors that allow technicians to implement rich multimedia services.

Recently very important advances have been produced in the physical level including MIMO technology, Ultra Wide Band, Cognitive Radio... These advances improve the radio signal received by terminals but they do not avoid the terminals loss coverage in certain regions where there is strong radio pollution or simply faults of coverage. 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 in the wireless world; Reviewing of interesting QoS properties of wireless 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. The assistants will be invited to experiments with their own WiFi mobile devices just in case.

Biography of the lecture

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.