Challenges of merging digital imaging and wireless communication

Recent advances in digital imaging technology combined with the next generation digital wireless communication has great potential to transform the paradigm for how humans will communicate visual information with one another in the next century. The first major change is that the model of one message from a single source to many clients (mass broadcasting) will be replaced by a model of many messages from multiple sources to many receivers (peer to peer). A second major change is that the model will move from a passive client, which only receives messages to an interactive client able to respond and even direct the information content to itself. This will have great impact in the experience of visual communication in the next decade. In this paper, we shall outline some of the key technological challenges in terms of bandwidth, processing power, data rate, data sizes and human factors required to influence this paradigm shift resulting from the merger of digital imaging and digital wireless communication technologies.