Multihop Ad Hoc Networking: The Theory

TLDR

The review assumes MANETs will be widely deployed for large‑scale consumer applications with ubiquitous, dense, and active nodes. The article reviews basic principles of MANETs and critically examines a decade of research. The authors synthesize ten years of MANET research, evaluating its foundational concepts and methodologies. They find that the field’s assumptions are unrealistic, that design gaps exist, and that these shortcomings pose a high risk of failure.

Abstract

This article reviews the basic principles behind mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) and critically discusses approximately ten years of research in this field. We summarize the main achievements and point out the limits of MANET research. This research was conducted under the assumption that the networks mainly will be used for large-scale general consumer applications, and nodes would be ubiquitous, thus reasonably dense and active. Both assumptions do not reflect reality and certainly would not be true in an initial phase of deployment. A lack of realism regarding the objective of MANET coupled with a lack of realism during the design of MANET are the main causes of MANET running a high risk of failure