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.
Mobile communication has gained significant importance in today’s society. As
of 2010, the number of mobile phone subscribers has surpassed 5 billion [ABI10],
and the global annual mobile revenue is soon expected to top $1 trillion [Inf10].
While these numbers appear promising for mobile operators at first sight, the
major game-changer that has come up recently is the fact that the market is
more and more driven by the demand for mobile data traffic [Cis10].
Wirelessmeshnetworkingisahotandgrowingtopic,stillinitsinfancyin
some ways, whilst already shown to be capable in others. From a military
beginning, mesh networks moved to civilian use and are now being
deployed worldwide as both local area networks (LANs) and metro-
politan area networks (MANs). However, these deployments are still
‘leading edge’ and it is not yet clear what the most enduring applications
of mesh will be – particularly as the market moves from early adopters
towards widespread take up.
This book is an entry-level text on the technology of telecommunications. It has been
crafted with the newcomer in mind. The twenty-one chapters of text have been prepared
for high-school graduates who understand algebra, logarithms, and the basic principles of
electricity such as Ohm’s law. However, it is appreciated that many readers require support
in these areas. Appendices A and B review the essentials of electricity and mathematics
up through logarithms. This material was placed in the appendices so as not to distract
from the main theme, the technology of telecommunication systems. Another topic that
many in the industry find difficult is the use of decibels and derived units. Appendix C
provides the reader a basic understanding of decibels and their applications. The only
mathematics necessary is an understanding of the powers of ten
Someone who wants to get to know the customs of a country frequently
receives the advice to learn the language of that country. Why? Because the dif-
ferences that distinguish the people of one country from those of another are
reflected in the language. For example, the people of the islands of the Pacific
do not have a term for war in their language. Similarly, some native tribes in
the rain forests of the Amazon use up to 100 different terms for the color green.
We were on the lookout for ice.
I was in a 32 foot sailing yacht with writer and explorer Tristan Gooley, undertaking a
double-handed sail from Scotland through the Faroes up to 66 33 45.7 N and the midnight
sun. Now sailing out of the Arctic Circle we were approaching Iceland from the north, heading
for the Denmark Straits, where ice flowed south. The Admiralty Pilot warned of bergs but the
ice charts we had sailed with were over a week old. We needed an update.
In case you haven’t noticed, multimedia communication over IP and wireless net-
works is exploding. Applications such as BitTorrent, used primarily for video
downloads, now take up the lion’s share of all traffic on the Internet. Music file
sharing, once on the legal cutting edge of massive copyright infringement on col-
lege campuses around the world, has moved into the mainstream with signifi-
cant legal downloads of music and video to devices such as the iPod and nu-
merous other portable media players.
This book is about multipoint cooperative communication, a key technology to
overcome the long-standing problem of limited transmission rate caused by inter-
point interference. However, the multipoint cooperative communication is not an
isolated technology. Instead, it covers a vast range of research areas such as the
multiple-input multiple-outputsystem, the relay network, channel state information
issues, inter-point radio resource management operations, coordinated or joint
transmissions, etc. We suppose that any attempt trying to thoroughly analyze the
multipoint cooperative communication technology might end up working on a
cyclopedia for modern communication systems and easily get lost in discussing all
kinds of cooperative communication schemes as well as the associated models and
their variations.
In the past few decades, a technological revolution has occurred that has changed
the way we live in dramatic ways. This technological revolution is the result of
the emergence and evolution of a wide variety of new wireless networking tech-
nologies. Now people using these technologies are able to access the network and
control many applications at will with their handheld devices anywhere, anytime.
Although these technologies have made a long lasting impact in the revolution, it
has also opened up various challenging issues which are yet to be resolved to make
them more efficient and cost-effective.
The ever-increasing demand for private and sensitive data transmission over wireless net-
works has made security a crucial concern in the current and future large-scale, dynamic,
and heterogeneous wireless communication systems. To address this challenge, computer
scientists and engineers have tried hard to continuously come up with improved crypto-
graphic algorithms. But typically we do not need to wait too long to find an efficient way
to crack these algorithms. With the rapid progress of computational devices, the current
cryptographic methods are already becoming more unreliable. In recent years, wireless re-
searchers have sought a new security paradigm termed physical layer security. Unlike the
traditional cryptographic approach which ignores the effect of the wireless medium, physi-
cal layer security exploits the important characteristics of wireless channel, such as fading,
interference, and noise, for improving the communication security against eavesdropping
attacks. This new security paradigm is expected to complement and significantly increase
the overall communication security of future wireless networks.
