Pedestrians must often find their way in unfamiliar urban environments or complex buildings. In these cases they need guidance to reach their desired destination, for example a specific room in a local authorities' building, a counter, or a department at an university. The goal of location-based mobile services is to provide such guidance on demand (anywhere, anytime), individually tailored to the actual information needs and presented in preferred forms. Thereby the navigation service requires positioning and tracking capabilities of a mobile user with a certain positioning accuracy and reliability. In particular, navigating in urban areas is a very challenging task as pedestrians move in spaces where none of the known positioning techniques works continuously in standalone mode and the movement is in a much more complex space than 2D networks (i.e. on pedestrian paths and along roads, outdoor and indoor, through underground passages, etc.). To solve this challenging task of continuous position determination, a combination of different location technologies is required. The integration of the sensors should be performed such that all the sensors are tightly coupled in the sense of a so-called multi-sensor system. In a new research project in our University entitled "Pedestrian Navigation Systems in Combined Indoor/Outdoor Environments (NAVIO)" we are working on the improvement of such navigation services. The project is mainly focusing on the information aspect of location-based services, i.e. on the user's task at hand and support of the user's decisions by information provided by such a service. Specifications will allow selection of appropriate sensor data and to integrate data when and where needed, to propose context-dependent routes fitting to partly conflicting interests and goals as well as to select appropriate communication methods in terms of supporting the user guiding by various multimedia cartography forms. To test and to demonstrate our approach and results, the project takes a use case scenario into account, i.e. the guidance of visitors to departments of the Vienna University of Technology. First results of our project are presented in this paper.

Mobile phones of the future will be the access terminals to many different types of service. This will mean that they must be able to reconfigure themselves to support the differing service requirements placed upon them. At the root of this ability to reconfigure must be components and architectures that allow such flexibility, and so the key objective of the work programme on terminals within the Virtual Centre of Excellence in Mobile and Personal Communications (Mobile VCE) has been the design, definition and performance evaluation of key components and architectures for future generation reconfigurable terminals.

Passengers flying with Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong's new Chek Lap Kok Airport may not be in too much of a hurry to board their plane once they see what the airline's high-tech departure lounge has to offer. The major IT element within the lounge is a unique state-of-the-art passenger `infotainment' network that allows passengers to access a multitude of services via custom-built desktop units. The system is based around asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networking technology, which provides a high-speed switching capability for multimedia sources such as video, graphics, text and audio. Passengers access services via a touch screen by swiping their boarding pass through a built-in boarding pass/credit card reader. This immediately personalises the display according to records stored in a customer database, and the passenger is presented with a customised graphical user interface that allows them to navigate through a number of different menu levels with four simple, colour coded `hot' buttons: forward, backward, main menu and restart. At a touch they can find flight information, choose from a large number of TV channels, obtain the latest share price information, view travel facts about their destination, or perhaps listen to a selection of radio channels. Looped video material similar to traditional in-flight entertainment is also provided.

In this paper, presented at the ALTAC Conference held at Stirling University, UK, on 2nd October 1997, the author discusses how modern information and communication technologies have enabled a new kind of university to be established in the sparsely populated Highlands and Islands region of Scotland.

The performance of the multilevel code based high data rate (HDR) codec is evaluated with multiple-symbol differential detection over satellite channels. It is shown that multiple-symbol observation effectively fills the gap between conventional differentially coherent detection and ideal coherent detection with differential encoding. Being especially suitable for HDR application where carrier acquisition and tracking is extremely difficult, the codec reliably supports broadband ISDN transmission over a 72 MHz satellite transponder.

This paper describes the integration of broadband services into a distributed hypermedia system. The services under consideration are video telephony, video conferencing, transfer of multimedia information and support for cooperative work. Milestones in the evaluation of this system were: provision of a workstation based multimedia platform, adding capabilities of distributed data retrieval, implementation of basic hypermedia features and finally enhancement with broadband service components in order to support joint interactive working in a conferencing environment. This level of integration allows us to use the notion of broadband hypermedia. Realizations of the hypermedia prototype on networks using ATM-, MAN- and STM-technology are reported. (4 pages)

In March 1995 a proposal was put forward to set up a working group under the multimedia domain of the EC ESPRIT programme. MAGNET (Multimedia Action Groups NETwork) began officially on 1st December 1995. One of the first activities of the new group was to initiate a structural survey of the way the multimedia sector is evolving. MAG-PIE (MAGNET-Planning Information for Europe) is not a snapshot of the sector, nor is it attempting to compete with commercially available market research data. The objective of the project is to provide developers, suppliers and users of multimedia technologies with the information they need about the structure, trends and future evolution of the European multimedia industry and marketplace in order to plan the evolution of their business. The paper describes some of the early preliminary results emerging from the five study areas, which are: electronic publishing-the ability to use multimedia technologies for the commercial exploitation of information resources; distribution of multimedia products-mechanisms through which electronic information products can be distributed in their various markets; online transactions-the opportunities that exist for implementing new methods of charging for information products; emerging consumer applications-the factors that will create new markets for electronic information products in the consumer/home sector; legal frameworks-existing and emerging legal structures within which commerce in electronic information will be conducted. (6 pages)

The growth of the availability and use of multimedia systems in the next few years is likely to be enormous. The market, initially driven by consumers wishing stand alone systems with multimedia capabilities mainly for games, will extend rapidly into the requirement for truly integrated and networked multimedia systems. The driving force for this, as we are already seeing, is the availability of the Internet and world wide web (WWW) and the plans to provide networking to every home and workplace. The challenge for researchers in multimedia systems is how the stand alone systems can be transparently integrated with a wide number of different type of networks ranging from those providing high speed multi services to slower wireless based systems supporting mobile systems. In addition to the research into protocols to support such systems there is considerable research to be done in the provision of tools that allow the end user to take of advantage of the services offered. For example the need for intelligent browsers. This research will only be successful if a number of researchers from different areas are brought together. The author outlines some important areas that still need addressing. The main assumption made is that multimedia systems of the future will be distributed. (3 pages)

Until a few years ago, “bits” were used instead of “analog signals” in the content production facilities, for the purpose of providing more flexibility and high quality economically, and to create and store information. The prospects widened considerably when employing digital technology to transport signals from the “emission center” to the end user. Once the backbone's trunks are digital, a company running a network, today, for a specific sector, will find itself able to be a “carrier” for a multitude of different services, ranging from radio and TV to telephony and multimedia. The merger of the two traditional “information” distribution methods, broadcast and telecommunication networks, is moving towards a “horizontal separation” at two different levels; the “service level” and the “system level”. In this new and quickly evolving scenario, the legislative framework, which remains out of reach any technological aspect, has a key role.

An 80 Gbit/s high-speed multichip ATM switching module for broadband ISDN is described. The module employs a copper-polyimide MCM with four-layer copper-polyimide signal transmission layers and 15-layer ceramic power supply layers. All MCMs are interconnected by 98-highway flexible printed circuit connectors. Four Si-bipolar VLSIs are mounted on an MCM using the 150 µm, very-thin-pitch, outer lead TAB technique. In addition, a high-performance heat-pipe cooling technique is adopted. The switching module handles ATM cell rates of up to 80 Gbit/s and so will support the future B-ISDN.