Multimedia Wireless Communication Networks

无线通信已经彻底改变了我们的通信、信息检索和分发、娱乐和社会互动的模式。全球蜂窝电话用户的数量目前超过50亿，行业收入在1万亿美元的范围内。虽然目前对无线服务的需求中有很大一部分仍然以语音为中心，但未来几年的快速流量增长将由移动的数据和多媒体应用驱动，如移动的网页浏览、电影流、多人在线电子游戏、社交媒体、实时上下文感知服务和远程医疗。网络的设计和操作以可靠和资源有效的方式支持如此广泛的多媒体业务和应用，每个业务和应用具有其自身的服务质量（QoS）要求，这提出了令人生畏的挑战。

Wireless communication has revolutionized our modes of communications, information retrieval and distribution, entertainment and social interaction. The number of cellular telephone subscribers worldwide currently exceeds five billion and industry revenues are in the one trillion dollars range. While a significant fraction of the current demand for wireless services remains voice-centric, rapid traffic growth in the coming years will be driven by mobile data and multimedia applications such as mobile web-browsing, movie streaming, multi-player online e-games, social media, real-time context-aware services and telemedicine. The design and operation of networks to support such a wide range of multimedia traffic and applications, each with its own Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, in a reliable and resource-efficient manner, present a daunting challenge.