On behalf of the organising committee of the International Workshop on Convergent Technologies (IWCT) 2005, I would like to welcome you to Oulu.

Your host city of Oulu is located 160 km south of the Arctic Circle at a unique location where location where ultra hi-tech development mixes with the midnight sun and the wild North.

IWCT 2005 is the first in what is planned to be an annual series of workshops on convergent technologies. The requirements of very high data rates, high spectral efficiency, reliable, even ubiquitous coverage means many of the design paradigms suitable for existing systems need to be re-examined. Novel solutions for PHY and MAC, network architectures and topics of convergence will be addressed in this workshop.

IWCT 2005 will highlight the growing convergence of the cellular and non-cellular worlds in achieving ubiquitous, pervasive communications in next generation communications systems. The range of topics presented at IWCT is diverse within this field, covering existing and future networks, information theoretic analysis, and field trials. The range of topics shows the growing importance of this area of research.

IWCT´05 plenary speakers:

Prof. Behnaam Aazhang - Rice University, United States
Prof. Ezio Biglieri - Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Dr. João Da Silva - European Commission, Belgium
Prof. Anthony Ephremides - University of Maryland, United States
Prof. Matti Latva-aho - Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland
Prof. Ramjee Prasad - Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Aalborg University, Denmark
Prof. Theodore S. Rappaport - Wireless Networking and Communications Group, University of Texas at Austin, United States
Dr. Mikko A. Uusitalo - Nokia Research Center, Finland and WWRF Chairman

I warmly welcome you to Oulu and IWCT 2005!

Dr. Ian Oppermann
IWCT´05 General Chair