On 12 December 2001, the speaker participated in the one hundred year anniversary celebration of Marconi's first transatlantic wireless experiment at a receiving site on Signal Hill, near St. John's Newfoundland, Canada. Since then, wireless communications has come a long way and it is safe to say that in the last two decades, the real progress has been due to the application of information theoretic concepts. With wireless Internet access using IMT 2000/WLAN around the corner, Information Theory's role has never been more important. We describe several techniques such as: Space-time codes, turbo, convolutional and Reed Solomon codes, multiuser detection, source coding and encryption which have served as enabling techniques for sophisticated wireless systems. Networking concepts such as wireless QoS resource control, Radio Access Networks (RAN), Advanced Medium Access Control (MAC) etc. which are necessary for Wireless Internet will be presented. The presentation will be suitable, not only for information theory researchers, but also for a general audience.

Vijay K. Bhargava received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada in 1970, 1972 and 1974 respectively.

Currently, he is a Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Previously he was with the University of Victoria (1984-2003) and with Concordia University in Montréal (1976-1984). He is a co-author of the book Digital Communications by Satellite (New York: Wiley, 1981), co-editor of Reed-Solomon Codes and Their Applications (New York: IEEE, 1994) and co-editor of Communications, Information and Network Security (Boston: Kluwer, 2002). His research interests are in wireless communications.

Dr. Bhargava is a Fellow of the B.C. Advanced Systems Institute, Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), IEEE, Canadian Academy of Engineering and Royal Society of Canada. He is a recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal (1984), IEEE Canada's McNaughton Gold Medal (1995), IEEE Haraden Pratt Award (1999), IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000), IEEE Graduate Teaching Award (2002), and Eadie Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (2004).

Dr. Bhargava is very active in the IEEE and was nominated by the IEEE Board of Directors for the Office of IEEE President-Elect. Currently he serves on the Board of the Communications Society. He is an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. He is a Past President of the IEEE Information Theory Society.