IJCST Vol. 2, Issue 4, Oct. - Dec.

2011 ISSN : 0976-8491 (Online) | ISSN : 2229-4333(Print)

How the two Adhoc networks can be different:

MANET & WSNs
1
Vandana Jindal, 2A.K.Verma, 3Seema Bawa
1,2,3
Thapar Univ., Patiala, Punjab, India

Abstract B. WAN - Wide Area Network

Reasons for switching over from a wired network to a wireless The area covered under WAN is a large distance for
network are many. To name a few - sharing internet access, communication between computers. An example of WAN is
along with the files and printers, playing games, always on, no ‘The Internet’, which covers the entire earth. WAN is distributed
more messy wires required and the list goes on and on. For a collection of geographically LANs. A network connecting device
more mobile solution where a user needs to access network router connects LANs to WANs. WAN used network protocols like
resources on the move, radio technology is the only logical ATM, X.25, and Frame Relay for long distance connectivity. 
choice. The number of people using their mobile devices to
access online news and other information on a daily basis C. Wireless - Local Area Network  
is rising sharply. According to a report issued in March 16 by A LAN, based on wireless network technology often referred
marketing research firm comScore between January 2008 to as Wi-Fi or WLAN has no wires for communication instead
and January 2009, the number of people who used their it uses radio signals as the medium (for communication).
devices every day more than doubled, from 10.8 million to Wireless network cards are employed (installed) for accessing
22.4 million. any wireless network around. Mostly wireless cards connect
to wireless routers for communication among computers or
Keywords accessing WAN, internet.
MANET, WSN, CAN, SAN, DAN
D. MAN - Metropolitan Area Network
I. Introduction MAN, metropolitan area network falls in middle of LAN and
A network may be defined as a connection between two or more WAN, covering physical area greater than LAN but smaller than
computers either through cables, telephone lines, satellites, WAN, such as a city.
radio waves or infrared beams, such that they are able to
share resources like- CD-ROMs, printer etc., or exchange files E. CAN - Campus Area Network
or allow electronic communication. From the above definition As the name suggests i.e. campus area network, it is usually
it may now be said that the network may be classified into a used in local business offices/ buildings or large universities.
wired network or a wireless network. Catering to the needs It is composed of a number of LANs. The physical area covered
of today’s executives, a common man, researchers, tourists is less than a Metropolitan area network, MAN.
etc., where the desire to connect to - anything - anytime has
become an integral part of everyone’s life. All this has led to F. SAN - Storage Area Network
rapid development in the area of networking and to be more SAN technology is basically used by data oriented organizations
specific- wireless networking. Here we shall confine our study where the primary requirement is data storage. Storage area
to the area of two types of wireless networks i.e. adhoc network network connects servers to data storage devices by using
and wireless sensor network (WSN). Fiber channel technology.    

II. Types of networks G. SAN - System Area Network

The networks may broadly be classified as under: SAN, system area networks also referred to as cluster area
A. LAN - Local Area Network network connecting high performance computers with high
B. WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network speed connections (in cluster configuration).
C. WAN - Wide Area Network
D. MAN - Metropolitan Area Network III. Why Wireless Networks?
E. SAN - Storage Area Network or referred with names like In today’s world where the technology is changing with the blink
System Area Network, Server Area Network, or sometimes of an eye, people prefer to update themselves with the tip of
Small Area Network their finger anywhere - anytime thus leading to the installation of
F. CAN - Campus Area Network, Controller Area Network or a wireless network i.e. a network without cables which otherwise
Cluster Area Network would have been scattered in offices or homes.
G. PAN - Personal Area Network
H. DAN - Desk Area Network A. Advantages
The main reasons for the popularity of wireless networks are
A. LAN - Local Area Network as follows:
The area covered under LAN is short i.e. small offices, home,
internet cafes etc. It can be controlled and administrated 1. Convenience
by a single person. It uses TCP/IP network protocol for Wireless Networks help connecting to the internet more
communication between computers.  conveniently. There is no need to pull an Ethernet connection
through walls and ceilings and people can connect anywhere
with a strong enough signal and a wireless network that is

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publicly accessible without a password. and comparison of these two approaches employed in Wireless
Networks. By no means do we claim that the search has been
2. Availability exhaustive but have attempted to cover maximum areas and
Wireless Networks WLANs are available anywhere in the world parameters.
at an affordable cost.
V. Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs)
3. Productivity Situations, where the construction and destruction of networks
The universal access to the network and Internet can translate take place on adhocism, mobile ad-hoc networking poses to be
into real savings. an excellent choice. The idea of mobile ad-hoc networks was
conceived in 70s. It was only in mid-90s that this conception
4. Reduced Cost started taking its shape and emerged as a challenge. In Latin, ad
Initially, the investment needed for wireless LAN hardware is hoc means “for this purpose only”. They can be setup anywhere
higher than the cost of wired LAN hardware, but the overall without the use of infrastructure i.e. the cables and the base-
installation expenses and life-cycle costs are significantly lower. station. They are mobile and hence the name - Mobile Ad hoc
Long-term cost benefits are greatest in dynamic environments NET works popularly called MANETs. An Ad hoc network may
requiring frequent moves and changes. be a LAN with wireless connections where some of the network
devices are a part of the network only for the duration of the
5. Mobility session (communication). MANET is a collection of independent
Wireless LAN systems can provide LAN users with access to mobile nodes which communicate with each other through
real-time information, enhancing productivity and dispensing radio waves. If no direct link exists between the source and the
services anywhere in their organization which otherwise would sink then multi-hop routing is used i.e. packets are forwarded
have not been possible with the wired networks. using various techniques.
Time saving
A. MANET node model Architecture
6. Scalability
Wireless LAN systems can be config.d in a variety of topologies
to meet the needs of specific applications and installations.
Configurations can be easily changed ranging from peer-to-
peer networks (suitable for a small number of users) to full
infrastructure networks (of thousands of users that enable
roaming over a broad area). Fig. 1: MANET node model: The router I has on the top a MANET
interface, and is connected, on the bottom, to hosts (H) via
B. Limitations classic IP links.

1. Wireless Links B. Why Ad hoc networks?

• Packet loss due to transmission errors 1. Setting up of fixed access points and backbone
• Variable capacity links infrastructure is not always viable
• Frequent disconnections/partitions • Infrastructure may not be present in a disaster area or
• Limited communication bandwidth war zone
• Broadcast nature of the communications • Infrastructure may not be practical for short-range radios;
Bluetooth (range ~ 10m)
2. Mobility 2. Ad hoc networks:
• Dynamically changing topologies/routes • Do not need backbone infrastructure support
• Lack of mobility awareness by system/applications • Are easy to deploy
• Useful when infrastructure is absent, destroyed or
3. Limitations of the Mobile Computer impractical
• Short battery lifetime
• Limited capacities C. Characteristics of MANET
Some salient features of MANETs are as follows:
IV. Wireless technologies around • Rapidly deployable, self-configuring
In order to cater to the needs (general or specific) of the people, • Wireless links
various wireless technologies have come up each with its own • Multihop communication (basically nodes communicating
benefits and limitations and the research is still going on. Various to fixed infrastructure)
wireless technologies that are either already into existence • Purpose specific
or coming into shape are - Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, WiMax, DSRC, • Autonomous
GSM/3G etc. The reason of these fast upcoming technologies • Unlike wired network, no master-slave relationship
are all based on wireless networks as they are convenient
(installing at home/ office), affordable, scalable, no need for
cables and can be shifted to any place along with the user.
In the following sections we shall be comparing the two wireless (a)Mobile, ad-hoc network (b) Wireless, Fixed network
networks i.e. MANETs and WSNs with respect to various Fig. 2: Types of Wireless networks
parameters. This paper summarizes our initial investigation

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• Nodes act both as host and router energy source (usually battery). Size and cost constraints on
• No centralized control. Intrinsic mutual trust. sensor nodes result in corresponding constraints on resources
• Dynamic network topology. like energy, memory, computational speed and bandwidth. A
• Autonomous, no infrastructure required. sensor network is usually made up of a wireless ad-hoc network
• May be set up anywhere. i.e., each sensor supports a multi-hop routing algorithm.
• Limited security.
• Energy constraints. Sensor node Architecture

D. Applications of MANETs
• Military or police exercises.
• Disaster relief operations.
• Mine site operations.
• Urgent business meetings.
• Robot data acquisition.
• Sensor networks
• Students on campus
• Free Internet connection sharing
• Conferences

E. Factors affecting MANETs

1. Bandwidth-constrained, variable capacity links

A very normal feature in wireless networks is congestion all
because of multiple access, fading, noise and interference
conditions thus leading to application demands (of resources)
exceeding the limit of the network capacity. As the mobile
network is an extension of the fig. 3 Architecture and aspect
of a node Fig. 4: WSN Communication
The main work of a sensor node is to acquire information from the
areas of their deployment. These are usually deployed in those In WSNs, each node may be equipped with a variety of sensors,
areas or regions where human intervention is not possible. It such as acoustic, seismic, infrared, still/motion video camera,
may accomplish the tasks like measuring temperature, voltage, etc. The nodes get organized in clusters, detecting events.  Each
or even dissolved oxygen. The nodes are a part of a wireless node has sufficient processing power to make a decision, and in
network. The gateway collects the measured data from each turn broadcasts the decision to other nodes in the cluster.  One
node and sends it over to the sink. node may act as the cluster master and the communication
• Fixed network infrastructure, mobile adhoc users require takes place through radio waves using a protocol such as IEEE
similar services. 802.11 or Bluetooth.
• Energy-constrained operation: Nodes are battery operated
in MANETs. Thus energy conservation is of utmost A. Characteristics of WSNs
importance. • Unique characteristics of a WSN include:
• Limited physical security: MANETs are more prone to physical • Limited power they can harvest or store
security threats like - eavesdropping, spoofing, denial-of- • Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions
service etc. For relief to some extent, MANETs have been • Ability to cope with node failures
provided with the decentralization of network control.
1. Mobility of nodes
F. Routing Protocols in MANETs
Pro-active: Routes are set up based on continuous control traffic
and all the routes are maintained all the time.
Re-active: Does not take initiative for finding routes but
establishes routes “on demand” by flooding a query.
Hybrid: As the name suggests this approach employs the
combination of both reactive and pro-active

VI. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

A wireless sensor network (WSN) as the name suggests is a
wireless network with spatially distributed autonomous devices
making use of sensors for monitoring physical or environmental Fig. 2: Wireless Sensor Network
conditions. [1,2] WSNs was originally motivated by military
applications like battlefield surveillance, but now it finds its • Dynamic network topology
applications in areas like healthcare applications, home • Communication failures
automation, traffic control etc. Each node in a sensor network • Heterogeneity of nodes
is equipped with a radio transceiver, a microcontroller and an • Large scale of deployment

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• Unattended operation 5. Location based routing:

• GEAR [9] (Geographic and Energy Aware Routing): It uses
B. Applications of WSNs energy aware and geographically-informed neighbor
The applications for WSNs are many and varied. Some of the selection heuristics to route a packet towards the
applications for WSNs are: destination region. The key idea is to restrict the number
1. Habitat monitoring of interests in directed diffusion by only considering a
2. Object tracking certain region rather than sending the interests to the
3. Nuclear reactor control whole network. By doing this, GEAR can conserve more
4. Fire detection energy than directed diffusion.
5. Traffic monitoring • GEM [10]: It makes use of a virtual polar coordinate system
6. Area monitoring to align with the actual network topology. The nodes in the
7. Environmental monitoring network form a ringed tree whose root is a convergence
8. Patient monitoring node. Each node is denoted with the number of hops to the
9. In Kindergartens root of the tree and a virtual angle range, and the node-
10. Seismic Monitoring to-node routing is denoted with a ringed tree.
11. Field Experiment
12. Contaminant Transport VII. Critical differences: WSNs & MANETs
1. Energy Critical
C. Factors affecting WSNs 2. Scalability
1. Data reliability 3. Addressing
2. Battery life 4. Static more or less
3. Cost 5. Active networking
4. Transmission range
5. Data rate VIII. Data delivery models
6. Data latency From application perspective
7. Physical size 1. Continuous
8. Data security 2. Event-driven
3. Observer-initiated
D. Routing Protocols in WSNs 4. Hybrid
Due to data-centric and application-specific nature, node-centric 5. From implementation perspective
approaches do not constitute the best communication paradigm 6. Flooding
for sensor networks. Instead, data-centric communications are 7. Unicast
preferred [3], since it is more adequate for applications where 8. Multicast
the data read from sensors is important, and not the address
of specific nodes. The various protocols available are: Table 1: WSN V/s MANET
1. Flooding: A method for relaying data in WSNs without
the need for any routing algorithms or and topology Factors/ Issues WSNs MANETs
maintenance.
2. Gossiping: the receiving node sends the packet to a Close to humans
randomly selected neighbor which picks another neighbor Focus on e.g. laptops, PDAs,
to forward the packet to and so on. Interaction interaction with mobile radio
the environment
3. Flat routing [4]: The 3 protocols that fall into this category terminals
are- Nodes Not many
• SPIN (Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation): Very large
deployed
sends data to sensor nodes only if they are interested. Population of Densely Sparsely
• DD (Directed diffusion): sets up gradients for data to flow nodes populated populated
from source to sink during interest dissemination.
Low
• Rumor routing [5]: The basic idea of rumor routing is to Failure rate High
use agents to create paths leading to each event when
the event happens. The agents are actually long-lived Point-to-Point
Communication Broadcast
messages traversing in the network. Later queries can
be routed along these agent-generated paths. In order to Communication
Short Long
join the path, the queries are first sent on a random walk Range
in the network. Efficiency,
Resolution, Receipt rate,
4. Hierarchical [6]: The 3 protocols that fall into this category Metrics Dissemination
Latency, Scalability,
are- speed
Robustness
• LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy): forms Redundancy
clusters to minimize energy dissipation.
• PEGASIS [7] (Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Not an issue
Power Limited
Systems)
• TEEN [8] (APTEEN) (Threshold-Sensitive Energy Efficient Bandwidth
Sometimes Yes
Protocols) deficient

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Unique ID by its Wireless Networks and Mobile Comp., April 2001.

Identification Not unique MAC address [9] Y. Yu, D. Estrin, R. Govindan, “Geographical and Energy-
Aware Routing:A Recursive Data Dissemination Protocol
High for Wireless Sensor Networks,” UCLA Comp. Sci. Dept.
Memory Limited
tech. rep., UCLA-CSD TR-010023, May 2001.
Needed only if nodes
Needed as mobility [10] NEWSOME J, SONG D. GEM: Graph embedding for routing
Fault tolerance exhaust available
increases and data-centric storage in sensor networks without
energy or are moved
geographic information [C]//Proceeding of 1st ACM
Data Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems,
Sometimes No
Redundancy Nov 5-7, 2003, Los Angeles, CA, USA. New York, NY, USA:
Flooding, Gossiping, Pro-active, ACM, 2003, pp. 76-88.
Routing Flat Routing,
Reactive,
Protocols Hierarchical,
Location based Hybrid Vandana Jindal is currently working as an
Dynamic Assistant Professor in the department of
Topology Dynamic Computer Science at D.A.V College, Bathinda.
ZigBee, IEEE
She holds degrees of B.Tech, MCA, M.Phil.
Standards Since January 2009, she has been with the
802.15.4, ISA100,
IEEE 802.11
IEEE 1451 Thapar University, Patiala in Punjab as a
Ph.D. student. Her research interests include
database management systems, wireless
Structure
sensor networks. She is a member of IEEE
and IEI.

IX. Conclusion A K Verma is currently working as

Ad Hoc Wireless Sensor Networks have the capacity to Assistant Professor in the department
revolutionize the contemporary technical arena. Offering of Computer Science and Engineering
a more convenient means of communication, this idea of at Thapar University, Patiala in Punjab
infrastructure less networks can transform many applications, (INDIA). He received his B.S. and M.S. in
including military strategy, home security, information transfer, 1991 and 2001 respectively, majoring in
environment monitoring, and surveillance. This concept can Computer Science and Engineering. He
initiate wave of wireless interaction that the world has not yet has worked as Lecturer at M.M.M. Engg.
seen. College,Gorakhpur from 1991 to 1996.
From 1996 he is associated with the Thapar University. He has
References been a visiting faculty to many institutions. He has published
[1] Römer, Kay; Friedemann Mattern (December 2004). over 100 papers in referred journals and conferences (India
“The Design Space of Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE and Abroad). He is member of various program committees
Wireless Communications 11 (6), pp. 54–61. doi:10.1109/ for different International/National Conferences and is on the
MWC.2004.1368897. [Online] Available: http://www. review board of various journals. He is a senior member (ACM),
vs.inf.ethz.ch/publ/papers/wsn-designspace.pdf. MIEEE, LMCSI (Mumbai), GMAIMA (New Delhi). He is a certified
[2] Thomas Haenselmann (2006), “Sensor net works”, GFDL software quality auditor by MoCIT, Govt. of India. His main areas
Wireless Sensor Network textbook. Retrieved on 2006-08- of interests are: Bioinformatics, database management systems
29. and Computer Networks. His research interests include wireless
[3] D. Niculescu. “Communications Paradigms for Sensor networks, routing algorithms, securing ad hoc networks and
Networks”, IEEE Communications, march, 2005. Pp 116- design/develop applications for other fields based on IT.
122.
[4] JAMAL N. AL-KARAKI, AHMED E. KAMAL,” ROUTING
TECHNIQUES IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS: A Seema Bawa holds M.Tech (Computer
SURVEY”, IEEE Wireless Communications December Science) degree from IIT Kharagpur and
2004 Ph.D. from Thapar Institute of Engineering
[5] D. Braginsky and D. Estrin, “Rumor Routing Algorithm for & Technology, Patiala. She is currently
Sensor Networks,” Proc. 1st Wksp. Sensor Networks and Professor and Dean of Students’ affairs
Apps., Atlanta, GA, Oct. 2002. (DOSA). Her areas of interest include Parallel
[6] Heinzelman, A. Chandrakasan, H. Balakrishnan, “Energy- and distributed computing, Grid computing,
Efficient Communication Protocol for Wireless Microsensor VLSI Testing and network management. Prof.
Networks,” Proc. 33rd Hawaii Int’l. Conf. Sys. Sci., Jan. Bawa is member of IEEE, ACM, Computer
2000. society of India and VLSI Society of India.
[7] S. Lindsey, C. Raghavendra, “PEGASIS: Power-Efficient
Gathering in Sensor Information Systems,” IEEE Aerospace
Conf. Proc., 2002, vol. 3, 9–16, pp. 1125–30.
[8] A. Manjeshwar, D. P. Agarwal, “TEEN: a Routing Protocol
for Enhanced Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks,”
1st Int’l. Wksp. on Parallel and Distrib. Comp. Issues in

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