Study of Impact of Mobile Ad hoc Networking and its Future Applications

Today, many people carry numerous portable devices, such as laptops, mobile phones, PDAs and mp3 players, for use in their professional and private lives. For the most part, these devices are used separately-that is, their applications do not interact. Imagine, however, if they could interact directly: participants at a meeting could share documents or presentations; all communication could automatically be routed through the wireless corporate campus network. These examples of spontaneous, ad hoc wireless communication between devices might be loosely defined as a scheme, often referred to as ad hoc networking, which allows devices to establish communication, anytime and anywhere without the aid of a central infrastructure. This paper describes the concept of mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) and points out some of its applications that can be envisioned for future. Also, the paper presents two of the technical challenges MANET poses, which include Geocasting and QoS.