P90/1 Evaluation of Mobile Communications: From Voice Calls to Ubiquitous Multimedia Group Communications

Today, mobile communications play a central role in the voice/data network arena. With the deployment of 3G just around the corner, new directions are already being researched. In this paper we address the evolution of mobile communications, from its first generation, 1G, to the latest 3G, and give a glimpse of the foreseeable future of Beyond 3G (B3G). In the latter case, we evaluate B3G scenarios in terms of network heterogeneity, migration to B3G, mobility over heterogeneous networks, and real-time multimedia communications in mobile environments