Advances in wireless terminals

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Abstract
Current wireless terminals are limited to voice terminals such as cellular and PCS phones, and traditional laptop computers and PDAs configured with wireless modems and network interface cards. However, the current wireless networks, which are by and large wireless extensions of the cir- cuit-switched voice networks, are being replaced by emerging wireless networking technologies that are intrinsically designed to support packet data and multimedia services. This will lead to novel networked applications and services, which in turn will require wireless terminals capable of exploiting these services. What shape will these next-generation wireless terminals take? The answer, based on the much talked about notion of "convergence," would appear to be a marriage of the laptop or PC with a wireless phone in the same package, leading to terminals such as the Nokia 9000 (1) or Bell Laboratories' wireless handset (2). We argue that such a complex one-size-fits-all voice-data integrated wireless terminal will, at best, be a point solution. Rather, with the availability of cheap radio and computing hardware and ubiquitous low-cost indoor and outdoor wireless networking infrastructures, the capability to access a wireless network will soon be embedded into a variety of devices, gadgets, and appliances with specialized functions in our environment. In this article we describe the technological challenges and identify potential solutions in designing these myriad future "wireless terminals" that will handle diverse data types, have limited battery resources, and operate in environ- ments that are unplanned, insecure, and time-varying, and have context-dependent services.

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