Ad hoc and sensor wireless networks: Architectures, algorithms and protocols

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have received significant attention in recent years due to their potential applications in environment monitoring, traffic monitoring and controlling, mining and shipping security, animal tracking, battlefield, disaster relief operations and so on. Nodes in these networks are usually powered by batteries and self-organized into a network via wireless communications. However, unexpected failure of nodes, rapid changes of topologies, high error rates, collision interference, and bandwidth and power constraints together pose new challenges for this type of networks.