Address autoconfiguration in wireless ad hoc networks: protocols and techniques

With the advent of smaller devices having higher computational capacity and wireless communication capabilities, the world is becoming completely networked. Although, the mobile nature of these devices provides ubiquitous services, it also poses many challenges. In this article, we look in depth at the problem of addressing in wireless ad hoc networks and the currently available techniques and protocols for both IPv4 and IPv6. We present an exhaustive study of the literature and summarize the features of each technique. We believe that this analysis will be helpful for network and application designers, as well as for researchers.