Resource management issues in future wireless multimedia networks

Broadband multimedia services and wireless services are becoming very popular. They are presently the two major drivers in the telecommunication industry. It is expected that wireless mobile users' demands for multimedia mobile services will rapidly increase in the future. The paper starts by presenting the evolution of wireless networks to support future integrated multimedia wireless personal services and highlight the need for efficient resource management. The limited resources in wireless systems, such as spectrum resource and transmitter power also stress the need for efficient resource management. Emphasis is given in the paper to the discussion of the channel allocation, mobility management, and bandwidth distribution problems. A review of some approaches proposed in the literature to solve these problems is presented. Finally, the paper discusses some of the key resource management issues that need to be addressed in the context of future wireless mobile networks that support multimedia communications while ensuring quality of service guarantees.