Emerging wireless networks

"Preface Mobile and wireless networks have gain lot of interests and their usage are nowadays a commodity and we have experienced an explosive increasing in wireless data applications, such as real-time multimedia services (e.g., VoIP, video streaming, gaming). Furthermore, diverse emerging wireless technologies have been defined and ongoing work and research activities still very active for the design of architectures, protocols and standards. Amongst the popular emerging wireless technologies we can consider fourth generation (4G) networks which include Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX. However, legacy wireless technologies such as UMTS/HSPA, EV-DO and WiFi will be part 4G networks. Although lot of work have been done on these different technologies, their coexistence lead to several challenges. In fact, the interworking of these diverse technologies as well as the efficient delivery value-added applications and services over these emerging wireless systems lead to challenging issues such as security, mobility management, architectures, QoS provisioning, resources allocation. To solve these different issues related to heterogeneity of wireless access technologies and networks, several efforts have been made in order to propose innovative ideas in term of novel protocols, architectures and algorithms. The requirements of next-generation or emerging wireless networks open even more new opportunities for many interesting and comprehensive research topics targeting at concepts, methodologies, and techniques to support advanced mobile value-added services. Clearly, the development of new mechanisms, protocols, algorithms, applications, architectures, and systems will have a significant impact for the successful deployment de emerging wireless networks"--