Report on an International Event Cost 281/ebea Forum

A Common COST 281/EBEA (European BioElectromagnetics Association) Forum on European Projects with two workshops ‘‘Emerging Technologies’’ and ‘‘Mobile Communication and Children’’ were held at the University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza,’’ Italy, Faculty of Electrical Engineering from May 2 to 5, 2002. The previous workshop that focused on the electromagnetic aspects of emerging technologies was organized by COST 244bis in Southampton, UK, in September 1999. Recent years have brought great development in electronic article surveillance for anti-theft devices, radio frequency identification for access-control or warehousing and inventory tracking and new technologies in medical therapies and diagnostics. There have also been significant changes in the technology of various electronic communication systems, for instance, wireless networks, body-LAN, blue-tooth, and mobile radio communication such as the very popular UMTS. On May 4, 2002, COST 281 organized a new ‘‘Emerging Technologies’’ workshop. It was chaired by Norbert Leitgeb from the Technical University of Graz, Austria, and Luc Martens from the Department of Information Technology, Ghent University, Belgium. Luc Martens introduced the goal of the workshop. He emphasised the necessity to review and update the results of the 1999 workshop and to investigate emerging technologies stressing UMTS and the new 4G technologies. The following papers were presented by experts: