Recent spectacular achievements in wireless, mobile, and sensor networks have dramatically changed our lives in many ways. However, the rapid evolution of wireless systems not only promises increased functionality, reliability, availability, and security, as well as putting a wide variety of new services at the users' disposal ? it also creates a number of design challenges that our research community is now facing. Scientists and engineers need to come up with, and promptly implement, novel wireless network architectures, while system operators and planners rethink their business models and attend to the growing expectations of their customer base. To provide a suitable forum for discussion between researchers, practitioners, and industry representatives interested in new developments in the respective research area, IFIP WG 6. 8 launched three separate series of conferences: MWCN (Mobile and Wireless Communications Networks), PWC (Personal Wireless Communications), and WSAN (Wireless Sensor and Actors Networks). In 2008, MWCN and PWC were merged into the IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2008), held in Toulouse, France, from September 30 to October 2, 2008. MWNC 2008 and PWC 2008 topics were subsequently revised with a view to covering the whole spectrum of hot issues in wireless and mobile networking. As a result, IFIP WG 6. 8 decided to add WSAN as another WMNC track.

There are numerous factors contributing to the dynamic growth of wireless communication systems we've been observing in the past 10 years, the most important being the increasing network user mobility and the technological advances in high-speed data transmission over radio channels. Research centres and standards-making institutions the world over conduct works on 3G integrated systems of person-to-person and person-to-computer communications, wireless counterparts of classical LAN, ATM and IP architectures, satellite and access networks as well as advanced service platforms like W AP and other concepts. Among the many commercial and non-profit organisations professionally involved in the development of the new information infrastructure, of particular influence is the International Federation for Information Processing. Within its Technical Committee TC-6, a working group WG 6.8 has been set up to co-ordinate IFIP activities in the area of wireless communications. It has done so, among others, by arranging regular meetings of academic and industrial researchers, known as IFIP TC-6 WG 6.8 Workshops on Personal Wireless Communications (pWC). Such workshops were held in recent years in Prague, Frankfurt/M, Tokyo and Copenhagen, and their success has resulted in the promotion of PWC to the status of IFIP Working Conference.

Wireless systems for mobile communication is one of the most rapidly expanding fields in digital telecommunications. Such hot topics as wireless Internet, mobile access to multimedia services and wireless convergence systems are likely to affect the whole of the information society and will pose intellectual challenges to researchers in the foreseeable future. Transmission techniques like WCDMA, user-oriented protocols like WAP and communication structures like LEO are just a few tools that seem to usher in the era of unlimited resource availability. Personal Wireless Communications addresses these issues, with 17 regular papers and 4 invited papers by leading researchers in the area of wireless communications. The volume comprises the proceedings of the Working Conference on Personal Wireless Communications (PWC'2000), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Gdansk, Poland in September 2000.The contributions cover a wide range of topics, from 3G cellular systems to wireless Internet and WAP design to wireless LAN and ATM; from speech coding and antenna design to teletraffic modelling and protocol evaluation. The book is thus essential reading for theoreticians and engineers interested in the current progress in wireless systems, as well as for IT students and researchers.

Recent spectacular achievements in wireless, mobile, and sensor networks have dramatically changed our lives in many ways. However, the rapid evolution of wireless systems not only promises increased functionality, reliability, availability, and security, as well as putting a wide variety of new services at the users' disposal ? it also creates a number of design challenges that our research community is now facing. Scientists and engineers need to come up with, and promptly implement, novel wireless network architectures, while system operators and planners rethink their business models and attend to the growing expectations of their customer base. To provide a suitable forum for discussion between researchers, practitioners, and industry representatives interested in new developments in the respective research area, IFIP WG 6. 8 launched three separate series of conferences: MWCN (Mobile and Wireless Communications Networks), PWC (Personal Wireless Communications), and WSAN (Wireless Sensor and Actors Networks). In 2008, MWCN and PWC were merged into the IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2008), held in Toulouse, France, from September 30 to October 2, 2008. MWNC 2008 and PWC 2008 topics were subsequently revised with a view to covering the whole spectrum of hot issues in wireless and mobile networking. As a result, IFIP WG 6. 8 decided to add WSAN as another WMNC track.