Welcome

A Message from the General Chair

In just a few short years, we've witnessed explosive growth in both wide-area cellular systems, and local area wireless networks. Additionally, we are beginning to see and project similar growth trends in home area radio networks and personal body networks. All of this suggests that we are living in exciting times in the development and adoption of wireless and mobile computing.

Looking forward, we face significant challenges in providing un-compromised connectivity and performance, and in making the technology easy-to-use and accessible to everyone. This year's Mobile Computing and Networking Conference provides a great forum and springboard to come together and address these challenges. It offers an important and timely opportunity to learn, and to build relationships and understandings as we take on these difficult problems.

MobiCom'99 is the fifth of an annual series of international conferences dedicated to addressing the challenges of the wireless revolution. In organizing this conference, we have worked hard to provide an experience that will energize and stimulate you intellectually.

We have invited some of the community's most respected and well-recognized leaders to share their vision of the future with us. We have organized technical events such as tutorials, research presentations, discussion panels, and workshops that will provide worthwhile opportunities for learning, educating, debating, and exchanging information. All these events are set in one of the finest conferencing location in Washington.

So please join us at MobiCom'99 on August 15-20, at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center located on Seattle's scenic inner harbor. It will be an event you don't want to miss.

Harel Kodesh
MobiCom'99 General Chair
Vice President
Information Appliance Division
Microsoft Corporation

A Message from the Technical Program Chairs

MobiCom'99 marks the fifth consecutive year of growth for this conference series. We received 170 paper submissions from 22 different countries, a growth in number of submissions of 15% over last year and an indication of the continued excitement in the field. The quality of the submissions was generally excellent and hard choices had to be made. An access-controlled Technical Program Committee web page was provided where TPC members could peruse submissions and select the papers they felt most qualified to review. The review process was double blind (reviewers were not provided author information), and almost all papers received three or more independent detailed reviews from TPC members. The TPC then met in New York City and after long debate selected 28 papers for presentation at MobiCom '99.

We congratulate the winners of the MobiCom'99 Best Student Paper Award: "LeZi-Update: An Information-Theoretic Approach to Track Mobile Users in PCS Networks" by Amiya Bhattacharya and Sajal K. Das from the University of North Texas. Over one quarter of the submissions this year qualified as student papers. Not only was the winning paper the highest-ranked student paper submitted, it was also the highest-ranked paper of the entire conference.

This year for the first time we are introducing the "MobiCom Challenges" session with five papers describing "wild ideas" and challenges for mobile computing and communication for the next century. These papers will be presented in the special "MobiCom Challenges" session at the end of the conference.

The main program is arranged as eleven non-overlapping sessions: nine paper presentation sessions, including the MobiCom Challenges session, and two panel sessions. Each of the two panel sessions comprises two panels running in parallel but all paper presentation sessions remain single-track. Thus, conferees may attend all paper presentations and two of the four panels. In addition, there are two days of tutorials preceding the main program, and one day of workshops following the main program.

In all, we are extremely pleased with the technical program and applaud the efforts of the authors and the TPC in delivering such an excellent program under severe time constraints. We especially thank our authors, who chose ACM/IEEE MobiCom'99 as a forum for presenting their work. Particular thanks go the TPC members who reviewed many more than their quota of 14 papers and found time to attend the 11-hour TPC meeting in NYC. The quality of MobiCom'99 is a testament to their expertise and dedication. Finally, we thank the conference attendees, whose collective intense and vocal interest is fueling the growth of mobile computing and networking throughout the world. We hope you find the conference both interesting and enjoyable.