SPRING 2000 COURSE INSTRUCTION

Instructor

Prof. Sajal K. Das
Professor, Dept of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Texas at Arlington
Office: NH 249-B
Phone: (817)272-7405
E-mail: das@cse.uta.edu

About the course

Over the last decade there has been a rapid growth of wireless communications technology. Voice communications over wireless links using cellular phones has matured and become a significant feature of communications today. Alongside, portable computing devices such as notebook computers and personal digital assistants (PDA) have emerged -- as a result of which such applications as electronic mail and calendar/diary programs are being provided to mobile or roving users. It seems that the next generation of traffic in high-speed wireless networks will be mostly generated by personal multimedia applications including fax, video-on-demand, news-on-demand, WWW browsing, and traveler information systems.

For multimedia traffic (voice, video, and data) to be supported successfully, it is necessary to provide quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees between the end-systems. QoS means that the multimedia traffic should get predictable service from such resources as CPU time (for the communication software to execute) and network bandwidth. Additionally, the system must guarantee an acceptable end-to-end delay and maximum delay jitter. As opposed to the multimedia traffic in wire-line networks (e.g., broadband ISDN), the QoS provisioning problem in wireless networks is much more challenging due to the characteristics of wireless links (e.g. low transmission rates and high error rates) and user mobility (the user-network-interface keeps on changing throughout the connection).

This new graduate course will deal with various aspects of a cutting-edge technology, namely wireless and mobile multimedia computing and networking. Topics include, but not limited to:

Wireless multimedia communications and networks

Quality of service (QoS) issues for multimedia traffic

Overview of the lower layers (physical and data link layer)

QoS in medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless networks

Mobility issues (concepts of home agent and foreign agent in Mobile IP, impact of mobility on system performance and QoS requirements)

Overview of wireless ATM

Detailed descriptions of systems like AMPS, GSM, CDMA, and CDPD as well as modifications proposed to incorporate multimedia traffic .

Grading Policy

There will be no exam in this course. Grading will be based on the performance in homework assignments, technical presentations, and term projects.

Guest Speakers

We will have guest speakers from telecommunication.