Wireless Networking: Understanding Internetworking Challenges

This book focuses on providing a detailed and practical explanation of key existing and emerging wireless networking technologies and trends,while minimizing the amount of theoretical background information. The book also goes beyond simply presenting what the technology is, but also examines why the technology is the way it is, the history of its development, standardization, and deployment. The book also describes how each technology is used, what problems it was designed to solve, what problems it was not designed to solve., how it relates to other technologies in the marketplace, and internetworking challenges faced withing the context of the Internet, as well as providing deployment trends and standardization trends. Finally, this book decomposes evolving wireless technologies to identify key technical and usage trends in order to discuss the likely characteristics of future wireless networks.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. The Wireless Ecosystem 29
3. Wireless Personal Area Networks 51
4. Wireless Local Area Networks 112
5. Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks 195
6. Second-Generation (2G) Cellular Communications 250
7. Third-Generation (3G) Cellular Communications 366
8. Fourth-Generation (4G) Cellular Communications 469
9. Mobile Internetworking 559
10. Key Wireless Technology Trends: A Look at the Future 593
11. Building the Wireless Internet: Putting It All Together 623