During the past two decades, technological development related to telecommuni-
cation technologies has allowed organizations of all types and size to be able to de-
velop effective networking applications in support of information management. Fur-
thermore, telecommunication technologies combined with computer technology have
created the foundation of modern information technology which has affected all as-
pects of societal and organizational functions in our modern world.
Emergingmarketshaveseenanunprecedentedgrowthinthelastfewyears.Theoperatorfocus
has been on giving complete coverage to all regions (urban to rural) and to subscription to all –
people from the highest to the lowest income groups. When the idea is taking coverage for
the remotest of the regions and getting the ‘unconnected–connected’, technology and business
modelling are two important focus areas.
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.
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.
This introduction takes a visionary look at ideal cognitive radios (CRs) that inte-
grate advanced software-defined radios (SDR) with CR techniques to arrive at
radios that learn to help their user using computer vision, high-performance
speech understanding, global positioning system (GPS) navigation, sophisticated
adaptive networking, adaptive physical layer radio waveforms, and a wide range
of machine learning processes.
Cognitive radio has emerged as a promising technology for maximizing the utiliza-
tion of the limited radio bandwidth while accommodating the increasing amount of
services and applications in wireless networks. A cognitive radio (CR) transceiver
is able to adapt to the dynamic radio environment and the network parameters to
maximize the utilization of the limited radio resources while providing flexibility in
wireless access. The key features of a CR transceiver are awareness of the radio envi-
ronment (in terms of spectrum usage, power spectral density of transmitted/received
signals, wireless protocol signaling) and intelligence.
How will future generations refer to our times? Will it be known as one
of space exploration, genetics, atomic energy or computing? Possibly,
but I think it is more likely to be ‘The age of communications’. Not since
printed books and newspapers were first introduced has there been
such an explosion of communication. None of this technology could
function without modern cables and, just as important, competent
installers.
Optical communication technology has been extensively developed over the
last 50 years, since the proposed idea by Kao and Hockham [1]. However, only
during the last 15 years have the concepts of communication foundation, that
is, the modulation and demodulation techniques, been applied. This is pos-
sible due to processing signals using real and imaginary components in the
baseband in the digital domain. The baseband signals can be recovered from
the optical passband region using polarization and phase diversity tech-
niques, as well as technology that was developed in the mid-1980s.
When the authors of this book asked me to write the foreword of
their work on the digital enterprise, I immediately thought that it was
one more document on a fashionable topic in the technology and the
business world of the 21st Century often addressed by consulting
firms, some of which have aspired to become experts on the subject.
However, a more careful observation reveals that an issue more
important than the sole subject of the digital enterprise is: “Is your
company fully operational?”, because this is the real topic.
With the advancement of technology and miniaturization of electronic devices, applications of
wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be seen in diverse areas in our lives. In fact, these WSNs
have gained a lot of attention from both the research community and industry, making them
easily available on the market. An extensive amount of research, easy availability, and cheap cost
make them useful in various types of futuristic applications as well.
