Workshop: Developing a Common Wireless Networking Infrastructure

University Of Louisiana At Lafayette, Lafayette LA

Investigators

Abstract

The rapidly expanding information superhighway allows the storage and retrieval of information in a highly distributed information infrastructure. Yet this infrastructure requires users to maintain a fixed and universally known position in the network, which restricts user mobility and portability, so users can not access data from anywhere and at any time. Now the next step is to make the information superhighway available to mobile users. But this requires fundamental research that takes mobility, variable communication conditions, energy limitations and high frequency of disconnection into account when providing access to this distributed information infrastructure. To reach this goal, intensive cooperation of researchers from a number of different communities including the different wireless, distributed systems and information systems communities is necessary. Such collaboration currently appears at a risk. In view of this, our objective is to define and establish a common infrastructure of the discipline and to develop a consensus based document that will provide a foundation for implementation and standardization as well as further research. This infrastructure will foster collaboration between these different communities. Such collaboration is necessitated by teh current needs of wireless technologies, if new horizons of research and development are to be achieved in the next millennium.