Standardization of wireless technologies is a continuous process and even established standards are updated and modified in response to changes in technology and marketplace. On such example is IEEE 802.11 which was originally designed for 1 and 2Mbps traffic and is now being upgraded to support 600 Mbps in 802.11n and is being considered as a high-throughput (up to 1 Gbps) wireless interface for the nomadic scenarios in the scope of the next-generation of wireless systems. Similarly, enhancements to IEEE 802.16 are being considered to develop a mobile air-interface with support for up to 100 Mbps in the high mobility scenarios. This continuous evolution of the IEEE 802.11 and 802.16 standards is made possible with new innovation and contribution from both academics and industry.

The objective of this special issue is to provide the reader with recent development in these standards, to cover the technology roadmaps, current research and evolution of these technologies, as well as deployment experience and application requirements. Articles should focus on the emerging standards and on the evolution toward future standardization activities. The articles should highlight the technological challenges facing the development of the WLAN and WMAN technologies and identify the issues and the evolution paths of the standards in a way that a general reader could understand.

Original contributions are invited on the ongoing, approved and possible future standard activities and research in WLAN and WMAN technologies covering but not limited to following topics:

• Technological overview of ongoing, approved and emerging standardization activities, including new study groups.
• Advances in physical layer and medium access control for evolution of WLAN and WMAN standards.
• Traffic management and congestion control.
• QoS provisioning of real time multi-media traffic, e.g., VoIP and IP video.
• High throughput support in WLANs for nomadic access (up to 1 Gbps).
• Provisioning of Security and Privacy in WLAN and WMAN.
  
• Evolution of WLAN and WMAN standards to support to IMT-Advanced scenarios.
• Deployment experiences with WLAN and WMAN standard technologies.
• New applications of WLANs and WMANs standards.
• Experience with use of WLANs and WMANs in a Mesh network
• Standard technologies vs. proprietary implementations.
• Integration of WLANs and WMANs

Submission
Articles should be tutorial in nature and should be written in a style comprehensible to readers outside the specialty of the article. All submissions will be reviewed based on technical merit and relevance. Mathematical equations should not be used (in justified cases up to three simple equations could be allowed, provided the consent of the Guest Editors). Articles should have no more than 4,500 words, 6 tables/figures, or 15 references. Guidelines for prospective authors can be found on-line at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/pcm/pub_guidelines.html. Please send PDF (preferred), Microsoft Word, or PostScript formatted papers to Dave Cavalcanti at dave.cavalcanti@philips.com no later than 15 Jan 2008. Accepted papers will also be included in Wireless Communications Interactive (WCI), the online version of Wireless Communications Magazine.

Guest Editors