Advances in wireless terminals

The current wireless networks are being replaced by emerging wireless networking technologies that are intrinsically designed to support packet data and multimedia services. This will lead to novel networked applications and services, which in turn will require wireless terminals capable of exploiting these services. What shape will these next-generation wireless terminals take? The answer, based on the much talked about notion of "convergence", would appear to be a marriage of the laptop or PC with a wireless phone in the same package. We argue that such a complex one-size-fits-all voice-data integrated wireless terminal will, at best, be a point solution. Rather, with the availability of cheap radio and computing hardware and ubiquitous low-cost indoor and outdoor wireless networking infrastructures, the capability to access a wireless network will soon be embedded into a variety of devices, gadgets, and appliances with specialized functions in our environment. In this article we describe the technological challenges and identify potential solutions in designing these myriad future "wireless terminals" that will handle diverse data types, have limited battery resources, and operate in environments that are unplanned, insecure, and time-varying, and have context-dependent services.