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The article focuses on Personal Area Networks (PANs). The concept of a PAN differs from that of other types of data networks in terms of size, performance and cost. PANs are the next step down from LANs and target applications that demand short-range communications inside the Personal Operating Space (POS) of a person or device. There exist a number of different communication mediums to choose for implementing a PAN, such as electric and magnetic fields, radio and optical signal transmission. Finally, as in the case of all wireless networks human safety issues are of great concern. A PAN device will typically be very close to the user for long periods of time and therefore even small dangers could potentially have some impact on the user over time.

The article focuses on multiple-access techniques. While global spectrum partitioning is the mechanism for multiple access to the entire spectrum, for wireless systems operating in a particular geographic area in the same frequency band, multiple access means the simultaneous access to the same frequencies or channels within the same area by multiple users. While the multiple-access quality of service delivered to the user is a function of the service type and acceptable service delay, the radio channel performance criteria for all multiple-access schemes can be reduced to the fundamental consideration of interference between systems and within systems.

The article focuses on Point-to-multipoint (PMP) network architecture. PMP network architecture is the most widely used approach for electronic communication with a large number of destinations or nodes. It is used for wired telephone systems in which twisted wire pairs from each phone terminal are routed to a central office where calls are placed on shared trunk circuits for onward routing. The wired PMP networks provide service to discrete locations, whereas the wireless systems listed are designed to provide service to an area where the specific locations of the service users are usually unknown.

The article focuses on propagation environment models. Except for a vacuum such as outer space, wireless system wave propagation is affected by the elements and characteristics of the real environment in which the networks are deployed. Topographic maps are the fundamental source of information of terrain elevations. The map contains many types of information, including lines of constant elevation, or contours, that undulate across the map. The contour lines are usually drawn at regular elevation spacing so that relative line density is an indicator of how steep or how shallow the terrain slope is.

Chapter 1 discusses the handoff, which is the mechanism for transferring an ongoing call from one base station to another as a user moves through the coverage area of a cellular system. Admission control is a related problem, in which the radio resource management system has to decide if a new call arrival, or a request for service or handoff may be allowed into the system. Four conventional handoff schemes in a voice-based, single traffic system are summarized and two handoff schemes for integrated voice and data wireless mobile networks are also covered in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chapter 13 focuses on the transport layer in micro-cell and macro-cell wireless networks. The task in the transport layer is to organize the speed of transmission, acknowledgement and possible retransmission of every packet of a data transfer. It deals primarily with network congestion and reduced bandwidth problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chapter 20 reviews simple and efficient localized algorithms for calculating a connected dominating set in ad hoc wireless networks. A set of nodes is dominating if all the nodes in the system are either in the set or neighbors of nodes in the set. Applications of dominating sets in reducing the cost of routing and broadcasting are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chapter 21 reviews research on position based routing in ad hoc and sensor wireless networks in the view of node mobility and changes in node activity. Mobility is apparently a very difficult problem to handle in ad hoc networks, and all proposed routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks have significant drawbacks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chapter 10 focuses on the indoor system of BRAIN, a mm-waveband high-speed multimedia wireless LAN. It discusses the architecture and design of the prototype; a description of a wireless MAC protocol; the configuration and implementation of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]