ABSTRACT
Internet has been a part and parcel of life for sometime now. With the advent of technology, wireless networking is surging ahead. Multimedia applications are also finding their rightful place in this revolution. This chapter discusses an important multimedia application-audioconferencing. Issues related to media and the wireless networks have been addressed and some existing techniques for conferencing are presented. Learning from their limitations, we formulate the requirements for a better quality conference. We set out with refining the existing Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) architecture by introducing conference servers (CSs). We present a recently proposed metric called “Loudness Number (LN)” that helps in dynamically selecting speakers in a conference. This is aimed at facilitating a smooth transition of speakers while taking turns. Specific to the context of wireless networks, we argue that by adopting the refinements proposed here, some limitations in conferencing are mitigated. More efficient use of the existing bandwidth and reduced computational effort are highlighted, and the chapter concludes with some open issues and possible vistas for investigations.
