This comprehensive book gives you a hands-on understanding of the techniques and architectures being used to provide voice and data services over wireless networks. It serves as a unified “how it works” guide to wireless Internet telecommunications, systematically addressing each of the technological components and how they fit together. You get a clear picture of protocols like RTP for multimedia transport and SIP for session control signaling, and see what’s being done to tackle tough challenges in QoS control, mobility management, and security in the wireless environment. The book discusses at length the cutting-edge IP Multimedia Sub-System (IMS) of UMTS to illustrate how each of these crucial components can be successfully implemented in a real-world wireless IP system.

Internet and wireless technologies are converging towards an exciting future that we’ve only begun to realize. For professionals who have a background in the Internet or in mobile telephony – but not in both – this integrated “how it works” guide offers a practical understanding of wireless Internet communications, the technology components involved, and how they fit and work together. It provides a unified picture of important protocols for multimedia transport and session control, and explains what’s being done to tackle tough challenges in QoS control, mobility management, and security in the wireless environment. With enhancements to the next generation of the Internet protocol expected to provide greater support for wireless IP networks, the next Internet revolution may be just around the corner. This book provides professionals with what they need to know about the techniques and architectures that will get us there.

The unprecedented growth in the range of multimedia services offered today by modern telecommunication systems, is possible because of the advancements in signal processing technologies and algorithms.

The book presents a group of invited contributions, some of which have been based on the papers presented at the 7th International Symposium on DSP for Communication Systems held in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast, Australia, in December 2003. Part I of the book deals with applications of signal processing to transform what we hear or see to the form that is most suitable for transmission or storage for a future retrieval. The first three chapters in this section are devoted to processing of speech and other audio signals. The next two chapters consider image coding and compression, while the last chapter of this part describes classification of video sequences in the MPEG domain.

Part II, consisting of eight chapters, describes the use of signal processing for enhancing performance of communication systems. This enables the most reliable and efficient use of those systems to support transmission of large volumes of data generated by multimedia applications. The topics considered in this part, range from error-control coding through some advanced problems of the code division multiple access (CDMA), to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems and space-time coding.

The last part of SIGNAL PROCESSING FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND MULTIMEDIA contains seven chapters that present some emerging system implementations, utilizing signal processing to improve system performance and allow for a cost reduction. The issues considered, range from antenna design and channel equalization through multi-rate digital signal processing, to practical DSP implementation of a wideband direct sequence spread spectrum modem.