Mobile ad hoc network
Encyclopedia
A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring infrastructureless network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

 of mobile devices connected by wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...

 links. ad hoc is Latin and means "for this purpose".
Each device in a MANET is free to move independently in any direction, and will therefore change its links to other devices frequently. Each must forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and therefore be a router. The primary challenge in building a MANET is equipping each device to continuously maintain the information required to properly route traffic. Such networks may operate by themselves or may be connected to the larger Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

.

MANETs are a kind of wireless ad-hoc networks that usually has a routeable networking environment on top of a Link Layer
Link Layer
In computer networking, the link layer is the lowest layer in the Internet Protocol Suite , the networking architecture of the Internet . It is the group of methods or protocols that only operate on a host's link...

 ad hoc network.

The growth of laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...

s and 802.11/Wi-Fi
IEEE 802.11
IEEE 802.11 is a set of standards for implementing wireless local area network computer communication in the 2.4, 3.6 and 5 GHz frequency bands. They are created and maintained by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee . The base version of the standard IEEE 802.11-2007 has had subsequent...

 wireless networking have made MANETs a popular research topic since the mid 1990s. Many academic papers evaluate protocols and their abilities, assuming varying degrees of mobility within a bounded space, usually with all nodes within a few hops of each other. Different protocols are then evaluated based on measure such as the packet drop rate, the overhead introduced by the routing protocol, end-to-end packet delays, network throughput etc.

Types of MANET

  • Vehicular Ad Hoc Network
    VANET
    A Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network, or VANET is a technology that uses moving cars as nodes in a network to create a mobile network. VANET turns every participating car into a wireless router or node, allowing cars approximately 100 to 300 metres of each other to connect and, in turn, create a network with...

    s (VANETs) are used for communication among vehicles and between vehicles and roadside equipment.
  • Intelligent vehicular ad hoc networks (InVANETs) are a kind of artificial intelligence that helps vehicles to behave in intelligent manners during vehicle-to-vehicle collisions, accidents, drunken driving etc.
  • Internet Based Mobile Ad hoc Networks (iMANET) are ad hoc networks that link mobile nodes and fixed Internet-gateway nodes. In such type of networks normal ad hoc routing algorithms don't apply directly.
  • We can understand VANETs as subset of MANET and best example of VANET is Bus System of any University which are connected together. These buses are moving in different parts of city to pick or drop students if they are connected together, make a Ad hoc Network.

Simulation of MANETs

In general, there are two ways to develop simulations of MANETs. Either use a custom platform to develop the simulation using Network Simulators like OMNeT++
OMNeT++
OMNeT++ is a component-based, modular and open-architecture discrete event simulation framework. The most common use of OMNeT++ is for simulation of computer networks, but it is also used for queuing network simulations, and other areas as well....

, OPNET
OPNET
OPNET Technologies, Inc. is a software business that provides performance analysis for computer networks and applications.The company was founded in 1986 and went public in 2000. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland and has offices in Cary, North Carolina; Nashua, New Hampshire; Dallas,...

, NetSim
NetSim
NetSim is a popular network simulation tool used by the academic community for teaching, network lab experimentation and research. Various technologies such as Ethernet, Wireless LAN, Wi Max, TCP, IP, etc are covered in NetSim.-History:...

 or NS2. And the second option is to develop one's own simulation.

See also

  • List of ad hoc routing protocols
  • Delay-tolerant networking
  • Wireless community network
    Wireless community network
    Wireless community networks or wireless community projects are the organizations that attempt to take a grassroots approach to providing a viable alternative to municipal wireless networks for consumers....

  • Wireless mesh network
    Wireless mesh network
    A wireless mesh network is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. Wireless mesh networks often consist of mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways.The mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones and other wireless devices while the mesh routers forward traffic...

  • Backpressure Routing
    Backpressure Routing
    This article describes backpressure routing forqueueing networks. It shows how the algorithm is derived and how its optimality is establishedusing concepts of Lyapunov drift....


Further reading

Mobile ad hoc social network (Overview):

Packet Radio Papers:
Ad Hoc Network Papers (Overview):
Ad Hoc Network Books :

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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