A tutorial survey of topics in wireless networking: Part II

This is the second part of the survey of recent and emerging topics in wireless networking. We provide an overview of the area of wireless networking as that of dealing with problems of resource allocation so that the various connections that utilise the network achieve their desired performance objectives. In Part I we provided a taxonomy of wireless networks as they have been deployed. We then provided a quick survey of the main issues in the wireless ‘physical’ layer. We then discussed some resource allocation formulations in CDMA (code division multiple access) cellular networks and OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) networks. In this part we begin with a discussion of random access wireless networks. We first provide an overview of the evolution of random access networks from Aloha to the currently popular 802·11 (Wi-Fi) networks. We then analyse the performance of the 802· 11 random access protocol. We briefly discuss the problem of optimal association of nodes to Wi-Fi access points. Next, we consider topics in ad hoc multihop wireless networks. We first discuss topology and cross layer control. For the latter, we describe the important maximum weight link scheduling algorithm. The connectivity and capacity of randomly deployed networks are then analysed. Finally, we provide an overview of the technical issues in the emerging area of wireless sensor networks.