Heterogeneity is seen as the prevailing feature in Next Generation Networks, requiring the development of novel solutions to overcome the challenges posed by future communication environments. Thus, the major goal is to transform the diversity into an opportunity to increase user experience, which can be achieved through context-awareness. Considering this, and given the increasing demand for group-based multimedia services, this chapter focuses on providing an effective multimedia group communication in heterogeneous environments, developing an architecture driven by the available context information. It introduces a hierarchical architecture that employs the concept of abstract trees to control multiparty content distribution in a scalable way, being the trees built based on intelligent network selection schemes fed by available context information. The chapter’s ultimate goal is to find the best compromise between service personalization and resources optimization, developing an architecture flexible enough to properly react to context changes.
Editorial: Special Issue on Resource and Mobility Management and Cross-Layer Design for the Support of Multimedia Services in Heterogeneous Emerging Wireless Networks