There is a lot that can be said about smart sensor networks. In fact, many volumes of books would be needed to cover the topic material of such a booming domain. Composed of four sections and 15 chapters, each written by different contributing authors, this text provides a small sampling of the many innovations in the field. It is a collection of independent papers rather than a coherent treatment of the topic material.

The first section is about the Internet of Things (IoT) and network communication systems. In the first chapter, the authors start by providing examples of IoT devices and the ongoing standardization efforts. The latter part of the chapter details a proposed improvement to the nanosleep function used by the Linux scheduler to enable more accurate scheduling. The second chapter deals with smart antenna systems that can support simultaneous transmissions of multiple packets on different beams using the same channel. The authors propose a cluster-based mechanism containing orchestration nodes that know the locations of cluster members and their transmission rates, and gateway nodes that facilitate intercluster communication. Their aim is to reduce the number of transmission packets in the network.

In chapter 3, the authors propose and describe the creation of an ad hoc disruption-tolerant network. Communicating using Wi-Fi, mobile nodes issue periodic probe requests that they use to construct a localized view of the network for collaborative transmission of messages until they can be delivered to a terminal with Internet connectivity. Chapter 4 looks at the problem of power management for environmental monitoring systems. Covering power supplies, energy harvesting systems, and techniques for power consumption reduction, the authors also discuss approaches to maximizing sensor availability through predictive energy harvesting forecasting and entropy-based clustering.

The second section of the book is on data streaming, processing, and analysis. Chapter 5 delves into transmission techniques of sensor data where the consumers require different periodicity of the sensor data. Chapter 6 looks into the challenges involved in analyzing vehicular traffic congestion on a national and global scale. The authors propose an architecture to store and analyze large amounts of traffic data and evaluate the performance of two different database models. In chapter 7, the authors propose a sensor data compression technique that uses previously sensed data values and those from neighboring sensors to construct codebook-based data encoding. Ending the section, chapter 8 looks at the problem of aging populations and the need for sensor-based monitoring of the elderly. Their case study is a humidity sensor placed under the waist of patients to facilitate perspiration prediction and hence decrease the incidence of pressure ulcers.

The third section is all about healthcare applications, with its first chapter looking at how health information technology and other emerging trends will change the medical services landscape of the future. In chapter 10, the authors use the accelerometer and gyroscope within a mobile phone and create decision trees that characterize six different types of falls and distinguish them from four ordinary physical activities. Chapter 11 takes a very different angle on the topic and looks at using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for parallelization of decision tree-based data classification. Chapter 12 proposes to estimate stressed and relaxed states using just the subject’s pulse rate. Unfortunately, the proposed technique is evaluated using a sample size of just one.

The final section is on everyday life activities. Chapter 13 looks into building a pedestrian guidance service using proximity-based advertising beacons as popularized by Apple’s iBeacon, Google’s UriBeacon, and the Third Generation Partnership Project’s Proximity Services. In chapter 14, the authors use Wi-Fi scanners to identify the movement of pedestrians through city centers using the regular transmission of probe requests by Wi-Fi enabled devices carried on their person. The final chapter proposes a centralized, secure platform for the sharing of sensor data generated by multiple vendors and allowed by the end user. The case study involves monitoring elderly people by recording their daily movement and all their communication channels to identify deterioration in their cognitive function.

Many interesting topics are covered; however, unfortunately I cannot recommend this book due to its abuse of the English language. Let me provide but a few examples: “Successful exploiting the advantage of smart antenna systems and keep off the hardware constraint of smart antenna”; “Along with the growth of the elderly population, chronic diseases and dysfunction of the proportion of people will rise”; and my favorite, “Health care organisation requires doctors or nurses or hospital staffs to comprehend that their future in health information system, the need to construct supportable wellbeing frameworks, is irrefutably attached to great execution administration.” Although I totally accept that the majority of the authors are not native English speakers, and that their interests and talents lie elsewhere, it does not absolve the editorial team from reviewing and correcting the multitude of mistakes.