Wiley Wireless Flexible Personalised Communications: Cost 259: European Co-Operation in Mobile Radio Research

From the Back Cover Mobile Communications are becoming increasingly flexible, to account for the progressive migration towards third generation systems (UMTS) and their merging into fourth generation systems, and personalised due to the unique opportunities offered by emerging radio communication technologies. COST is a European forum for co-operative scientific research - COST action 259 in the field of telecommunications involves 250 researchers in 15 technical areas from 80 organisations in 18 countries, covering both academia and industry. The aim of COST Action 259 was to increase the knowledge of radio system aspects for flexible personalised communications which are capable of delivering different services and exploiting different bandwidths. The objective was also to develop new modelling techniques and related planning tools, in order to guarantee continuity (and quality) of services, delivered by networks of widely different capabilities and structures, across a number of different environments. Furthermore, in the perspective of a fast evolving demand for interfacing the photonic (glassfibre) network with the wireless network, investigations on the mutual interactions were also carried Written by leading European researchers throughout academia and industry, including Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Bosch Telecom and Telefonica Presents the latest research in mobile communications in the three key areas of radio systems aspects, antennas and propagation and network aspects Primarily written for researchers and practising engineers in the mobile and wireless field, this text would also prove to be a valuable source of background reading for graduate students of this leading edge topic. Product Description Recent years have witnessed an explosion of new operators and customers of cellular mobile communications and the importance of wireless/mobile communications in today's telecommunications industry is indisputable. The Final Report of COST 259, 'Wireless Flexible Personalised Communications' is the result of extensive work, performed by more than 200 European researchers from more than 90 institutions (universities and companies) in the area of mobile radio. ? Provides a discussion on the evolution of wireless/mobile communications focusing on the use of data and multimedia, and consequently broadband communications ? Examines the radio systems aspects of future wireless communication systems, concentrating primarily on physical layer issues and including assessments of OFDM and CDMA ? Presents radio propagation and adaptive antennas, and provides a thorough understanding of the mobile radio channel ? Discusses the radio network aspects for the improvement and optimisation of the existing 2G systems and the planning of UMTS/IMT2000 ? Explains the design and implementation of UMTS and new techniques for future wireless broadband communication systems Due to the broad and comprehensive range of topics covered in this book it will appeal not only to engineers working within the GSM industry but also to those involved in UMTS and to researchers working on the next generation of mobile systems. Review "The final report of the COST 259 project that explored radio system aspect for flexible personalized communication capable of delivering...services on different bandwidths...new modeling techniques...related planing tools...across a number of different environments." (SciTech Book News, Vol. 25, No. 3, September 2001) About the Author He is a Prof. of Telecommunications at IST. He has been involved in several R&D projects at the European level, within the frameworks of RACE, ACTS, COST and IST. Co-editor of COST 231 Final Report. He was the Chairman of the COST 259 project, which involved more than 90 universities and industries in Europe in the area of mobile radio. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 Introduction - Luis M. Correia This chapter contains a discussion on the evolution of mobile c