Ad Hoc Mobile Wireless Networks: Protocols and Systems

Chapter 2 Origins of Ad Hoc: Packet Radio Networks

2.1 Introduction

The merits of having an infrastructureless network were discovered in the 1970s. At that time, computers were bulky and so were radio transceivers. DARPA had a project known as packet radio, where several wireless terminals could communicate with one another on a battlefield. Packet radio was a technology that extended the concept of packet switching (which evolved from point-to-point communication metworks) to the domain of broadcast radio networks. During the 1970s, the ALOHA [12] project at the University of Hawaii demonstrated the feasibility of using the broadcasting property of radios to send/receive data packets in a single radio hop system. The ALOHA project later led ...