A Study of Research Trends and Issues in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Properties Of Ad Hoc Network

Formally, Ad hoc NetworkG(N,E) is defined as a collection of nodes N={n₁,n₂,n₃,…} connected by edges (Islam & Shaikh, 2012). The nodes are usually mobile with limited capabilities, links are volatile and insecure, and there are no dedicated nodes for addressing, routing, key management and directory maintenance etc. The nodes are themselves responsible for various network operations i.e. routing, security, addressing and key management etc. It is obvious from these characteristics that network protocols and algorithm that are currently available for wired and infrastructure-less wireless networks are not suitable for ad hoc networks (Islam et al., 2010). For example, a conventional routing algorithm when employed for ad hoc network can suffer from loops, stale routes and other issues due to the very sharp changes in the network. Similarly, the current security solutions are based on availability of authentication servers, certification authority and other security infrastructure, which are not generally available in ad hoc network. Therefore, new solutions are required for addressing various challenges of ad hoc network.

Different research efforts are underway to address various issues of ad hoc networks. In this chapter, we provide an adequate account of these efforts. There are already some surveys available that have summarized the previous researches on ad hoc networks. For example, Dow et al. (2005) and Singh et al. (2012) have provided a quantitative analysis of the number of research proposals appeared during last few years for addressing a particular issue of ad hoc network. Similarly, a summary of various research issues in ad hoc networks have been presented in (Chlamtac et al., 2003; Toh et al., 2005; Ghosekar et al., 2010; K.Al-Omari & Sumari, 2010). However, the focus of this chapter is on research pursued in ad hoc networks during recent years. The major contributions of this chapter are as follows:

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  To provide a summary of various research issues in ad hoc networks and the recent approaches adopted to tackle these issues

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  To investigate and report on various emerging models of ad hoc networking

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  To present a comprehensive overview of issues and corresponding solutions for different ad hoc networking models i.e. ad hoc grids, ad hoc clouds, wireless mesh networks and cognitive radio ad hoc networks etc.

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  To summarize the current state-of-the-art and avenues for further research