ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) Special Issue on "Recent Advances in IEEE 802.11 WLANs: Protocols, Solutions and Future Directions"

With the rapid growth in popularity of wireless data services and the increasing demand for wireless connectivity, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have become more widespread and are making their way into commercial and public areas being almost everywhere including business, office and home deployments. WLANs based on the IEEE 802.11 standards enjoy an exceptionally high popularity owing to their simplicity of setup, increased deployment flexibility, unlicensed frequency band, low cost and connectivity with minimal infrastructure changes. Lately, the need for Real Time (RT) multimedia services over WLANs is dramatically increased, including Voice over IP (VoIP), audio/video (AV) streaming, Internet videoconferencing, IPTV, distance learning, entertainment and gaming, and so forth.