What is MANET?

 Selfconfiguring network of mobile routers connected by wireless links.

1. Forms arbitrary topology.
2. Rapid, unpredictable topological changes
 Each device in a MANET is free to move independently in any direction, and will therefore change
its links to other devices frequently. Each must forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and
therefore be a router.

Characteristics of MANET

 No centralized control & administration

 Self-organizing and self-restoring
 Transmission through multiple hops
 Frequent link breakage and change of network topology

Applications of MANET

 Battlefield communication
 Sensor networks
 Personal area networking using PDAs, laptops and handphones, etc
 Search-and-rescue
 Cellular network and wireless Hot Spot extension

Problems

 Without a central infrastructure, things become much more difficult

 Problems are due to -:
a) Lack of central entity for organization available
b) Limited range of wireless communication
c) Mobility of participants
d) Battery-operated entities
What is WSN?
 A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensors to
monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure,
motion or pollutants and to cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location

Application

 Physical security for military operations

 Indoor/Outdoor Environmental monitoring
 Seismic and structural monitoring
 Industrial automation
 Bio-medical applications
 Health and Wellness Monitoring
 Inventory Location Awareness
 Future consumer applications, including smart homes.

Characteristics

 Power consumption constrains for nodes using batteries or energy harvesting

 Ability to cope with node failures
 Mobility of nodes
 Dynamic network topology
 Communication failures
 Heterogeneity of nodes
 Scalability to large scale of deployment
 Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions
 Easy of use
 Unattended operation.

Similarities between MANET and WSN

 Both are Distributed Wireless networks that is there is not a significant network
infrastructure in place.
 Routing between two nodes may involve the use of intermediate relay nodes also known
as Multihop Routing.
 Both Ad hoc and sensor nodes are usually battery-powered and therefore there is a big
concern on minimizing power consumption.
 Both networks use a wireless channel placed in an unlicensed spectrum that is prone to
interference by other radio technologies operating in the same frequency.
 Self-management is necessary because of the distributed nature of both networks.
Differences
 MANETs are usually “close” to humans, in the sense that most nodes in the network are
devices that are meant to be used by human beings (e.g., laptop computers, PDAs,
mobile radio terminals, etc.); conversely, sensor networks do not focus on human
interaction but instead focus on interaction with the environment.

 The number of nodes in sensor networks, as well as the density of deployment, can be
orders of magnitude higher1 than in ad hoc networks as the nodes in a sensor network are
usually embedded in the environment to sense some phenomenon and possibly actuate
upon it.

 Terms such as unicast and multicast common in MANETs, are hardly applicable in WSN
where we find other forms of routing such as one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many,
etc.

 The network size is case of a MANET depends upon no. of active users present in the
Deployment area. But in WSN’s the no. of nodes depends upon the extension of the
observed area, characteristics of nodes and on required redundancy

 The traffic in MANET’s are generally going to be higher owing to the use of well known
services like Web, mail, video etc but in case of WSN’s the data rate is low over a large
period of time as WSN’s interact with surrounding environment.

 In case of WSN’s the sensor nodes are state of art computation devices (Laptop or a
PDA) where as in case of WSN’s nodes are of simple and cheap elements implementing
efficient algorithms.

 WSN’s are conceivable with different network densities, from very sparse to dense
deployments which will require different or least adaptive protocols. This diversity
although present, is not as quite large in MANET’s.

 In both MANET’s and WSN’s energy is a scarce recourse. But WSN’s have tighter
requirements on network lifetime, and recharging or replacing WSN’s node batteries is
much less an option then in MANET’s. Owing to this, the impact of energy
considerations on the entire system architecture is much deeper in WSN’s than in
MANET’s.

 The QoS services in a MANET is traditionally dictated by traditional applications (low

jitter for voice applications) but for WSN’s entirely new QoS is requires which also takes
energy explicitly into account.
 Redundant deployment makes data centric protocol very important in case of WSN’s
which is irrelevant and alien in case of MANET’s.

 MANET’s uses public key cryptography for security purposes but WSN’s use
Symmetric key cryptography.

 Most nodes on WSN’s applications have stationary nodes compares to MANET’s.

 WSN’s are smaller, more powerful and more memory constrained compared to
MANET’s.

 Routing in MANET’s support any node pairs, some source routing and distance vector
protocols incur heavy control traffic but WSN’s support specialized traffic pattern as they
cannot afford to have too many node states and packet overhead.

 WSN’s nodes are mostly prone to failure because of mobility as some WSN nodes
requires mobility compared to MANET’s.

 The main purpose of MANET is distributed computing but WSN’s are used for
information gathering.