Integrated location management in mobile multimedia networks and its role in the development of human tracking systems

Advanced software protocols for multimedia packet networks are currently designed, tested and, in some cases, fielded by a variety of organisations. Additionally, a variety of solutions are required to provide next-generation, highly-programmable technology solutions to eventually provide reliable, efficient, and secure communications of multimedia traffic over rapidly-deployable mobile adhoc networks to pave the way for seamless extension of the Internet. In this context, it is recognised that user location identification is considered by the service providers as one of the most value-added services for the end-users. The focus of the research in these areas is to allow protocol software and the location technology solutions to be integrated in a flexible manner into the mobile multimedia networks through API (application programming interface) framework. Various location strategies needed to be analysed to derive candidate solutions for integrated location management. In this paper, the background preparation to derive a separate smart antenna API is defined to eventually incorporate it into the distributed network architecture. Preliminary results from the real-data smart antenna experiments are examined to find out the efficacy of the technique. The all-IP architecture for transporting medical information is identified and discussions on user identification to implement advanced human tracking systems is proposed. These systems primarily deal with the problems associated with locating patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease and using multimedia applications and the man-machine interfaces to develop new patient care services.