Professional quality voice over WLAN

A key element of generalized network access is the convergence of different services within one system. Future devices and applications will integrate professional quality real time voice and video traffic with packetized data. This will replace the current solution, where in-house wireless networks have two parallel infrastructures: the telephony infrastructure providing low-bandwidth but high quality of service, and the computer network for high data-rate but best-effort bursty traffic. In this paper we present a novel approach to merge both wireless networks by integrating professional quality telephony into WLANs to get high quality "voice over WLAN". This will lead to an innovative application in the field of wireless and mobile communications. The approach is to merge the upper layers of the DECT protocol stack with a current WLAN physical layer and MAC layer technology, using a protocol adaptation layer (PAL). © 2004 IEEE.