Ad hoc networks have been long on scientific research but short on practical applications. Stéphane Ubéda, one contributor of the book, attributes this paradox to the fact that ad hoc networks have a hard time “breaking through in the lifecycle of ‘objects’ in the telecommunications world.”

It is the intent of the editor of this collection of first-rate papers on wireless ad hoc and sensor networks to make the complex subject matter transparent. The book succeeds fully in what the editor claims as her main objectives: “report[ing] contributions from corresponding research communities in the different concerned fields,” “drawing up complete states of the art of the various cited fields,” and “set[ting] a milestone for future work.”

The book is intended as a springboard for a scientist or practitioner looking for a comprehensive view of the field of wireless ad hoc sensor networks. Wireless ad hoc networks, in contradistinction to wired networks in which routers perform the task of routing, are decentralized wireless networks. Since each node can forward data to other nodes dynamically, based on network connectivity, the network is labeled ad hoc. Packet radio networks were the earliest examples of wireless ad hoc networks.

The first chapter provides a concise description of the organization of the book. The following subject areas are included: routing (unicast, multicast, and hierarchical), mobility management, quality of service, scalability, and security. Chapter 2 has an extensive discussion of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) with unicast ad hoc routing, including a discussion of issues with node mobility, resource limits, and intermittent reliability of wireless links.

Chapter 3 focuses on the quality of service issue due to the lack of infrastructure ad hoc networks exhibit, along with their inherently ever-changing topology. Author Pascale Minet includes a performance evaluation study that looks at the stability of the chosen routes and load-balancing with respect to the quality of service within the optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol. Carrying the thread of optimization of resource usage and bandwidth conservation further, Houda Labiod, author of chapter 4, looks at multicast ad hoc routing protocols and espouses a new concept--the source routing-based multicast protocol--anchored in the quality of connectivity that employs metrics of either the ad hoc configuration or the applications.

Chapter 5 addresses the topic of self-organization in ad hoc or sensor networks. Since ad hoc and sensor networks are inherently infrastructureless, self-organization becomes a critical issue for using the nodes of the network with respect to autonomy, adaptation of environmental parameters, robustness, and scalability. This chapter, like many of the others, serves the dual purpose of introducing the state of the art of self-organization, as well as a piece of original research related to energy conservation and routing, called virtual topology.

Chapter 6 goes deeper into the self-organization of network nodes by discussing emerging services via a self-adaptive approach that starts out with creating server communities that enable services from the network to emerge. The notion of how human immune systems work plays an integral part in implementing the system. In contradistinction to the research proposed in chapter 6, chapter 7 stipulates another method of service discovery: the adaptation of routing becomes subservient to the need of the service discovery mechanism. Chapter 8 begins with a discussion of state-of-the-art clustering techniques for ad hoc networks. The author then proposes ways to improve on the challenges of mutual exclusion and the problem of initialization.

In chapter 9, primary issues with routing and data transmission security in ad hoc networks are detailed. Vulnerabilities and drawbacks are described as potential threats. All proposed solutions come up short when it comes to robustness, performance, and reliability. Another issue, scalability, is discussed in chapter 10, in conjunction with fault-tolerant distributed algorithms in wireless sensor networks. The chapter concludes with a discussion of techniques based on self-stabilization in a large-scale context.

Chapter 11 deals with code mobility in sensor networks. Chapter 12 shows one of the more obvious applications of wireless ad hoc sensor networks: vehicle-to-vehicle communications (via vehicular ad hoc networks, VANETs). A taxonomy of existing VANET projects is presented based on routing, mobility, and security.

What makes this book worth reading from cover to cover is the successful juxtaposition of state-of-the-art descriptions and concrete research projects related to wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. While many aspects of the study of wireless ad hoc sensor networks are still in flux, the book succeeds in presenting “a global, realistic, and critical vision of the evolution of spontaneous and autonomous networks.” Thus, the book is long on solid scientific research and short on speculation.