Wireless Ahoc Networks

A wireless adhoc networks is a collection of autonomous nodes and terminals that communicate with each other by forming a multihop radio network and maintaing connective in decentralized manner. The network is adhoc because each node is willing to forward data for other nodes, and so the determination of which nodes forward data is made dynamically based on the network connectivity. Since the nodes communicate over wireless links, they have to contend with the effects of radio communication, such as noise, fading and interference. In addition, the links typically have less bandwidth than in a wired network. Each node in a wireless adhoc network functions as both a host and a router, and the control of the network is distributed among the nodes. The network topology is in general dynamic, because the connectivity among the nodes may vary with time due to node departures, new node arrivals, and the possibility of having mobile nodes. Hence, there is a need for efficient routing protocols to allow the nodes to communicate over multihop paths consisting of possibly several links in a way that does not use any more of the network "resources" than necessary. Some of these features are characteristic of the type of packet radio networks that were studied extensively in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, research in the area of ad hoc networking is receiving much attention from academia, industry, and government. Since these networks pose many complex issues, there are many open problems for research and opportunities for making significant contributions.