Ad Hoc Networking Solutions

The decentralization of wireless networks to reduce the dependence on fixed infrastructures such as base stations has become the subject of vast interest in the past few years. In the future, this might form the backbone of general commercial mobile networks too. Such a system would be quite attractive for network operators and users alike, as it is inherently better suited to respond robustly to any unforeseen situation. At the same time, it does not require a fixed infrastructure that reduces both the setup and maintenance costs of a network. However, decentralization gives rise to various network setup and management issues on different open systems interconnection (OSI) layers. In this article, we present a few solutions, on different OSI layers, that provide a good end-to-end performance of such a scheme while ensuring that the network is decentralized and operates in a self-organized manner.