Wireless ad hoc network

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Wireless ad hoc network" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A wireless ad hoc network^[1] (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers or wireless access points. Instead, each node participates in routing by forwarding data for other nodes. The determination of which nodes forward data is made dynamically on the basis of network connectivity and the routing algorithm in use.^[2]

Such wireless networks lack the complexities of infrastructure setup and administration, enabling devices to create and join networks "on the fly".^[3]

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. This becomes harder as the scale of the MANET increases due to 1) the desire to route packets to/through every other node, 2) the percentage of overhead traffic needed to maintain real-time routing status, 3) each node has its own goodput to route independent and unaware of others needs, and 4) all must share limited communication bandwidth, such as a slice of radio spectrum.

Such networks may operate by themselves or may be connected to the larger Internet. They may contain one or multiple and different transceivers between nodes. This results in a highly dynamic, autonomous topology. MANETs usually have a routable networking environment on top of a link layer ad hoc network.