The mission of the Center for Wireless Multimedia Communications is to provide, by means of research, development and education, a significant contribution to the solution of some of the most important technological problems in the field of wireless communications. To this end, the Center can rely on the disciplinary research activities developed by the constituent groups, which exhibit peaks of excellence in the international scenario. From this basis, the Center will cooperate in the solution of interdisciplinary problems identified through the strict interaction with the industrial partners. The research, teaching and development activities of the Center are focused on a unifying theme that can be synthesized as "Universal wideband wireless (mobile and fixed) access to the Internet multimedia services". The emphasis, here, is on the keywords: Universal, to mean low cost, with a QoS independent of the user position and speed Wireless, yet characterized by a high QoS and by a great autonomy of the terminals Wideband, able to provide every user with data rates up to several tens of Mbit/s, superior to the second and third generation cellular standards (9.6 Kbit/s and 2 Mbit/s, respectively), and competitive with respect to the capacity offered by the current wired solutions, such as DSL Multimedia services, offered at accessible prices to all users, such as video on demand, electronic commerce, videoconferencing, interactive tele-teaching, tele-medicine, on-line multimedia library, exchange of videos, and many more which are difficult even to imagine these days. Such a large variety of services imposes to the network different constraints in terms of QoS and maximum delay, thus requiring the availability of innovative system tools both in the radio segment and in the MAC (media access control) level. In this context, the main objectives of the Center can be summarized as follows: To coordinate and focus a wide range of skills and experiences already present in the constituent Departments of Politecnico di Torino on the themes of wideband wireless communication systems and multimedia application. This goal is being pursued using the financial support to build up a well-equipped laboratory for the development, testing and experimentation of system prototypes and innovative solutions. To plan and develop the research activities with a constructive and continuous cooperation with the industries, enriched by the long-term innovative vision of the academy, and by the experience, assessment of relevance, sensibility to cost-effectiveness, and attention to the final product of the industry. To become an excellence site in Europe and worldwide for the research and teaching activities in the field (with particular attention to continuing education), so as to become a privileged and reliable partner for research and industrial Centers. To attract from all over the world outstanding researchers and teachers in the field, to involve them temporarily in the research and teaching activities of the Center. At the same time, to attract Italian and foreign PhD students, by offering a stimulating environment rich of state-of-the-art knowledge and fully equipped laboratories. To form students of the bachelor and master degrees in Information Engineering, and of the PhD degrees in the field, also with the cooperation of the industries through stages, theses in industrial laboratories, PhD positions supported by the industry, etc. To stimulate the entrepreneurship of the students and researchers of the Center and the development of start-up companies in the field, with attention to innovative ideas that can be patented.