Support for multimedia applications in a wireless ATM system

Mobility will be one key issue for future broadband access. Consequently, many research projects are currently focusing on wireless ATM networks. Within the European ACTS research program the "Magic WAND" project is developing mobile terminals and access points based on wireless ATM technology. The terminals will communicate at a speed up to 20 Mbit/s in the 5 GHz band within multiple picocells of approximately 50 meters in diameter. This technology supports applications and services demanding both high bandwidth and mobile network access, two contradicting requirements in the past. We take a look at typical multimedia applications and evaluate the key components of the WAND system necessary to support their quality of service (QoS) requirements. One major challenge is to guarantee QoS transparently over the wireless link. We present our solutions for a QoS-supported mobile audio/videoconferencing subsystem and analyse how video compression algorithms behave under the conditions of a wireless medium.