One traditional view of how Wireless networks evolve is of a continuous, inevitable progres-
sion to higher link speeds, combined with greater mobility over wider areas. This standpoint
certainly captures the development from first and second generation cellular systems focused
on voice support, and the early short-range Wireless data networks, through to today’s 3G
cellular and mobile broadband systems; there is every confidence that the trend will continue
some way into the future.
This book has grown out of my teaching and research at the University of Surrey and out of
my previous experiences in companies such as Philips, Ascom and Motorola. It is
primarily intended for use by students in master’s level and enhanced final-year under-
graduate courses who are specialising in communication systems and wish to understand
the principles and current practices of the Wireless communication channel, including both
antenna and propagation aspects
The current methods of communications are becoming less relevant under
today’s growing demand for and reliance on constant connectivity. Of
decreasing relevance are the models of a single radio to perform a single
task. The expansion of Wireless access points among coffee shops, airports,
malls, and other public arenas is opening up opportunities for new services
and applications.
The growing interest for high data rate Wireless communications over the last few decades
gave rise to the emergence of a number of wideband Wireless systems. The resulting scarcity
of frequency spectrum has been forcing Wireless system designers to develop methods that
will push the spectral efficiency to its limit.
The past decades have witnessed wide demand and applications for Wireless commu-
nications in the human body area, that is, in the immediate environment around a
human body. These demands and applications especially focus on Wireless transmis-
sion and networking of personal information for user identification, healthcare and
medical applications.
Employing multiple transmit and receive antennas, namely using multi-input multi-output
(MIMO) systems, has proven to be a major breakthrough in providing reliable Wireless
communication links. Since their invention in the mid-1990s, transmit diversity, achieved
through space-time coding, and spatial multiplexing schemes have been the focus of much
research in the area of Wireless communications.
The aim of this book, the first of two volumes, is to present selected research that
has been undertaken under COST Action IC0902 ‘‘Cognitive Radio and Net-
working for Cooperative Coexistence of Heterogeneous Wireless Networks’’
(http://newyork.ing.uniroma1.it/IC0902/). COST (European Cooperation in Sci-
ence and Technology) is one of the longest-running European frameworks sup-
porting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe.
The idea of writing this book entitled “Cognitive Networked Sensing and Big Data”
started with the plan to write a briefing book on Wireless distributed computing
and cognitive sensing. During our research on large-scale cognitive radio network
(and its experimental testbed), we realized that big data played a central role. As a
result, the book project reflects this paradigm shift. In the context, sensing roughly
is equivalent to “measurement.”
Today’s Wireless services have come a long way since the roll out of the
conventional voice-centric cellular systems. The demand for Wireless access
in voice and high rate data multi-media applications has been increasing.
New generation Wireless communication systems are aimed at accommodating
this demand through better resource management and improved transmission
technologies.
Wireless technology has been evolving at a breakneck speed. The total number of
cell-phones in use (as of 2011) was over 6 billion for a 7 billion world population [1]
constituting 87% of the world population. Additionally, with user convenience be-
coming paramount, more and more functions are being implemented Wirelessly.
