The next generation of smartphones and other mobile devices promises to be a much more pleasant experience for users, thanks to higher quality-of-service capabilities, said Dr. Seshadri Mohan, chair of UALR’s Department of Systems Engineering.

He and two colleagues who are experts in wireless communications technologies are the guest editors of the March 2012 edition of IEEE Communications Magazine and will introduce six articles specifying upcoming developments in next-generation wireless networks.

Mohan joined Anne Y. Lee, a Bell Labs Fellow and CTO of Advanced Communications Solutions Innovations at Alcatel-Lucent, and Abdi Modarressi, a distinguished member of the technical staff at AT&T, to edit the issue.

“In this issue of IEEE Communications Magazine, we are pleased to have assembled six diverse high-quality articles addressing the topic of ‘Convergence of Application Services in Next-Generation Networks,'” the editors said.

Mohan and his colleagues said thanks to higher quality-of-service capabilities in next-generation networks, popular mobile user activities such as watching videos, listening to music, and playing games will become more stable, faster, and better integrated.

“Another crucial aspect of next-generation service architecture relates to the ability of third parties, including end users, to inject features, enhancements, and/or capabilities into, or on top of, baseline services provided by traditional service providers,” Mohan and his co-editors said.

A range of themes are included in the six articles such as providing a framework for intelligent service adaptation, providing models for service construction and service exposure, provisioning novel services, implementing mechanisms that help end users compose services, and addressing the complex issue of incorporating application intelligence in transport services.

IEEE Communications Magazine has a monthly circulation of 41,000 copies, making it the most broadly distributed of any of the publications of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.