ABSTRACT
Recent advances in short-range wireless technologies have enabled a new wealth of networking possibilities for user devices. In particular, ad hoc networks have emerged as one of the most researched areas in the networking community over the last few years. An ad hoc network consists of a set of nodes equipped with wireless interfaces, which are able to communicate among themselves in the absence of any kind of network infrastructure. One of the most salient features of ad hoc networks is the concept ofwireless multihop communications. Unlike traditional wireless networks, mobile nodes are allowed to send messages to destinations that are not within the sender’s radio range. When the destination is several hops away, intermediate ad hoc nodes act as relays to forward data packets to their intended destinations. erefore, nodes need to use a routing protocol to nd paths to deliver data messages from sources to destinations. In general, ad hoc nodes can be mobile, which makes the design of routing protocols a very
challenging task. However, it is one of the research lines that has attracted most attention within the research community.
