Explained: Ad hoc networks
In recent years, many network scientists have turned their attention away from centralized networks such as the Internet and the cell-phone network -- and toward ad hoc networks, wireless networks formed on the fly by, say, emergency responders fanning through a burning building, tiny sensors scattered on the slopes of a volcano to monitor its activity, or autonomous robots exploring a forbidding environment. The problems are very tantalizing, theyre exciting to work on and they have an interesting mathematical structure, says Nancy Lynch, NEC Professor of Software Science and Engineering. All of traditional distributed-computing theory deals with wired-network algorithms, so those communication protocols have been studied for many years.