ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several emerging technical challenges as well as research opportunities to develop next-generation networked mobile video communication systems. It deals with the recognition of a broad spectrum of technical challenges in contemporary multimedia communications and networking that are inherent from the characteristics of both compressed media and the error-prone networks. The chapter analyzes the needs for developing advanced multimedia communications and networking technologies that are capable of exploiting unique and compound characteristics in delivering compressed multimedia data over heterogeneous network links and terminal devices. It summarizes the potential impact of the research activities on the next-generation multimedia communications and networking, especially those applications that are intended for seamless delivering of multimedia signals to mobile devices via wireless links. Multimedia data in a variety of popular formats such as animation, audio, and video clips have become the mainstream contents on the Internet and are being accessed by various mobile devices through wireless links.
