The institute will cover various aspects of mobile communications and also to corroborate and initiate joint Chinese and German research activities. Primary responsibility is both theoretical and practical research work for evolving third generation mobile communication systems. The work is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), P.R. China and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. The institute is the second wing of the Sino-German research establishment after the 'Sino-German Joint Software Institute' which was opened in Bejing earlier in 2003. sion takes place via a network of antennas at fixed locations, temporary ad-hoc networks can be set up using appropriate technologies. Such temporary networks can be used, for example, for car-to-car communication in vehicle fleets.