WirelessIPTelephony

Abstract

Both the Internet and wireless telephony have created unprecedented operating freedoms that are forcing paradigm shifts in business and social communication practices. Their impact, however, has emerged from opposite design philosophies. The wireless telephone network was designed to provide mobile access to speech applications; the Internet, on the other hand, was designed to deliver a wide variety of application types to fixed locations. The freedom and mobility offered by wireless networks provides a perfect compliment to the economies of scale and flexibility offered by the IP‐based Internet. As IP becomes an important driver of both core and access networks, it must support wireless voice at comparable levels of spectrum efficiency and voice quality as cellular telephony. Similarly, wireless network practices must be modified to accommodate IP‐based packet protocols. It is our aim here to describe the design challenges and technical hurdles facing successful deployment of wireless IP telephony.