»Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET)
~ Examples: establishing survivable, efficient, dynamic communication for emergency/rescue operations, disaster relief efforts, and military networks
~ A MANET is an autonomous collection of mobile users that communicate over relatively bandwidth constrained wireless links
~ network topology may change rapidly and unpredictably over time
~ network is decentralized, where all network activity including discovering topology and delivering messages must be executed by the nodes themselves
~ routing functionality will be incorporated into mobile nodes
~ small, static networks that are constrained by power sources, to large-scale, mobile, highly dynamic networks
~ in a military environment, preservation of security, latency, reliability, intentional jamming, and recovery from failure are significant concerns
~ military networks are designed to maintain a low probability of intercept and/or a low probability of detection
~ nodes prefer to radiate as little power as necessary and transmit as infrequently as possible,
~ thus decreasing probability of detection or interception
~ a lapse in any of these requirements may degrade the performance and dependability of the network