Acknowledgments
Writing a book is an effort on top of everything else that must keep running in parallel. Thus, writing
is basically an early morning, after ve, and over the weekends and holidays activity. It is a big effort
that requires dedication and persistence. This would not be possible without the support of a number of
people—people who helped in the simulations, in the making of the gures, in reading chapters, and
in discussing various issues concerning all aspects, from proofs to the structure and the layout of the
book.
First, I would like to express my gratitude to my mentor, friend, and colleague Nicholas Kalouptsidis,
for this long-lasting and fruitful collaboration.
The cooperation with Kostas Slavakis over the last six years has been a major source of inspiration
and learning and has played a decisive role for me in writing this book.
I am indebted to the members of my group, and in particular to Yannis Kopsinis, Pantelis Bouboulis,
Simos Chouvardas, Kostas Themelis, George Papageorgiou, and Charis Georgiou. They were beside
me the whole time, especially during the difcult nal stages of the completion of the manuscript.
My colleagues Aggelos Pikrakis, Kostas Koutroumbas, Dimitris Kosmopoulos, George Giannakopou-
los, and Spyros Evaggelatos gave a lot of their time for discussions, helping in the simulations, and
reading chapters.
Without my two sabbaticals during the spring semesters of 2011 and 2012, I doubt I would have
ever nished this book. Special thanks to all my colleagues in the Department of Informatics and
Telecommunications of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
During my sabbatical in 2011, I was honored to be a holder of an Excellence Chair in Carlos III
University of Madrid and spent the time with the group of Anibal Figuieras-Vidal. I am indebted to
Anibal for his invitation and all the fruitful discussions and the bottles of excellent red Spanish wine
we had together. Special thanks to Jerónimo Arenas-García and Antonio Artés-Rodríguez, who have
also introduced me to aspects of traditional Spanish culture.
During my sabbatical in 2012, I was also honored to be an Otto Mønsted Guest Professor at
the Technical University of Denmark with the group of Lars Kai Hansen. I am indebted to him for
the invitation and our enjoyable and insightful discussions, as well as his constructive comments on
reviewing chapters of the book and for the visits to the Danish museums on weekends. Also, special
thanks to Jan Larsen and Morten Mørup for the fruitful discussions.
A number of colleagues were kind enough to read and review chapters and parts of the book and
come back with valuable comments and criticisms. My sincere thanks to Tulay Adali, Kostas Berberidis,
Jim Bezdek, Gustavo Camps-Valls, Taylan Cemgil and his students, Petar Djuric, Paulo Diniz, Yannis
Emiris, Georgios Giannakis, Mark Girolami, Dimitris Gunopoulos, Alexandros Katsioris, Evaggelos
Karkaletsis, Dimitris Katselis, Athanasios Liavas, Eleftherios Kodis, Elias Koutsoupias, Alexandros
Makris, Dimitirs Manatakis, Elias Manolakos, Francisco Palmieri, Jean-Christophe Pesquet, Bhaskar
Rao, Ali Sayed, Nicolas Sidiropoulos, Paris Smaragdis, Isao Yamada, and Zhilin Zhang.
Finally, I would like to thank Tim Pitts, the Editor in Academic Press, for all his help.
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