Ad Hoc Networks

Ad Hoc Networks

The recent advances in the area of wireless networking present novel opportunities for network operators to expand their services to infrastructure-less wireless systems. Such networks, often referred to as ad-hoc or multi-hop or peer-to-peer networks, require architectures which do not necessarily follow the cellular paradigm. They consist of entirely wireless nodes, fixed and/or mobile, that require multiple hops (and hence relaying by intermediate nodes) to transmit their messages to the desired destinations. The distinguishing features of such all-wireless network architectures give rise to new trade-offs between traditional concerns in wireless communications and the notions of routing, scheduling and resource allocation. The purpose of this work is to identify and study some of these novel issues, propose solutions in the context of network routing and evaluate the usual network performance measures as functions of the new trade-offs.