Ad Hoc Wireless Networking [electronic resource] / edited by Xiuzhen Cheng, Xiao Huang, Ding-Zhu Du

Wireless networking enables two or more computers to communicate using standard network protocols without network cables. Since their emergence in the 1970s, wireless networks have become increasingly pop- ular in the computing industry. In the past decade, wireless networks have enabled true mobility. There are currently two versions of mobile wireless networks. An infrastructure network contains a wired backbone with the last hop being wireless. The cellular phone system is an exam- ple of an infrastructure network. A multihop ad hoc wireless network has no infrastructure and is thus entirely wireless. A wireless sensor network is an example of a multihop ad hoc wireless network. Ad hoc wireless networking is a technique to support robust and ef- ficient operation in mobile wireless networks by incorporating routing functionality into mobile hosts. This technique will be used to realize the dream of "e;anywhere and anytime computing"e;, which is termed mo- bile computing. Mobile computing is a new paradigm of computing in which users carrying portable devices have access to shared infrastruc- ture in any location at any time. Mobile computing is a very challenging topic for scientists in computer science and electrical engineering. The representative system for ad hoc wireless networking is called MANET, an acronym for "e;Mobile Ad hoc NETworks"e;. MANET is an autonomous system consisting of mobile hosts connected by wireless links which can be quickly deployed.