ABSTRACT
Internet of Things (IoT) is a heterogeneous network that provides the connectivity and communication between the physical world and the digital world. IoT interacts with different types of wireless networks (such as Wireless Sensor Networks, ZigBee, WiFi, Mobile Ad hoc Networks, and RFID [Radio-Frequency Identification]);offers greater mobility to the users; makes the physical infrastructures smarter, secure, reliable, and fully automated systems; and also reduces the cost of the network deployment. Originally, Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) was conceived as a small isolated network that does not have any connection to the outside world. However, over the years, MANET has evolved into an important network having applications in various fields that requires communication with other infrastructure networks such as IoT. This has necessitated MANET’s connectivity with the Internet, albeit in a restricted manner. This leads to an important issue of node identification in accordance with the usual IP network. Moreover, IP address facilitates multi-hop routing in MANETs. This chapter discusses the main challenges related to address assignment protocols in MANET. It further gives a detailed overview of the existing ad hoc address allocation protocols and categorizes them. Furthermore, the chapter evaluates and compares the performance of these addressing protocols through a set of performance metrics.
