Multimedia services for location-aware, ad-hoc collaboration in wireless networks

In this paper we present multimedia services for a collaborative work environment in wireless networks. This environment supports a location-aware communication in a neighbourhood defined by a given access point. All participants of this spontaneous virtual community can ad-hoc - without any previous exchange of contact information - interact via different multimedia services such as messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, etc. Users can join the community as soon as they enter the network zone around the access point or leave it at any time without affecting the communication platform. For the user interaction a general protocol is used, which can be adapted to various application types. A description of two sample applications - video conferencing and shared whiteboard - for this location-aware environment closes the paper.