Overview

Welcome to the world of wireless communications and the logical extension to the broadband architectures that are emerging as the future of the industry. No aspect of communications will be untouched by the wireless interfaces; no part of our working environment will be left untouched either. As the world changes and the newer technologies emerge, we can expect to see more in the line of untethered communications than in the wired interfaces. Users are becoming more mobile; data is being retrofitted to accommodate a wireless and a mobile user; and finally the new protocols for handheld devices ( Personal Digital Assistants [PDA], data-equipped cell phones, Internet-enabled devices) are all being adjusted to accommodate the higher speeds demanded by the end user.

With this in mind, we shall venture into a new world of wireless local loop, wireless handheld devices, wireless telephony, wireless CATV access, and wireless video-conferencing systems that will all be geared to meet the demands of this form of voice, data, video, and multimedia application.

When I agreed to write this book for the publisher, I was drawn back to a book that I published back in the early 1990s, called Wireless Networked Communications. The reason for the flashback is that I was ahead of the industry and myself at the time. The book discussed the many aspects of voice telephony over wireless communications and minimal data aspects. However, the topic of wireless data and LAN services is now very intriguing to many people. Moreover,...