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.

JACK L. BURBANK is a Principal Professional Staff in the Communications and Network Technologies group at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is an Associate Technical Editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine.

JULIA ANDRUSENKO is a communications engineer at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

JARED S. EVERETT is an electrical and computer engineer and a member of both the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Information Theory Society.

WILLIAM T. M. KASCH is a member of the Senior Professional Staff at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. His interests include IEEE/IETF standards and wireless network design.