Pathways towards Next Generation Cognitive Ubiquitous Networks (Keynote Lecture)

Over the past decade, wireless communications has seen an exponential growth and will certainly continue to witness spectacular developments due to the emergence of new interactive multimedia applications and highly integrated systems driven by the rapid growth in information services and microelectronic devices. So far, most of the current mobile systems are mainly targeted to voice communications with low transmission rates. In the near future, however, broadband data access at high transmission rates will be needed to provide users packet-based connectivity to a plethora of services. It is also almost certain that the neXt Generation (XG) wireless systems will consist of complementary systems with a set of different standards and technologies along with different requirements and complementary capabilities that will offer users ubiquitous wireless connectivity between mobile and desktop computers, machines, game systems, cellular phones, consumer electronic products, and other hand-held devices. A key requirement in future wireless systems is their ability to provide broadband connectivity with end-to-end quality of service (QoS), a high network capacity, and throughput at a low cost. This talk will present an overview of the most recent trends along with the evolution of wireless systems. It will also describe and discuss the challenges facing the XG broadband systems with a special interest on cognitive ubiquitous communications networks, cooperative communications, dynamic resource allocation, along with cross-layer design and optimization.