Definition

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring network of mobile routers (and associated hosts) connected by wireless links—the union of which form an arbitrary topology. The routers are free to move randomly and organize themselves arbitrarily; thus, the network's wireless topology may change rapidly and unpredictably. MANETs are usually set up in situations of emergency for temporary operations or simply if there are no resources to set up elaborate networks. These types of networks operate in the absence of any fixed infrastructure, which makes them easy to deploy, at the same time however, due to the absence of any fixed infrastructure, it becomes difficult to make use of the existing routing techniques for network services, and this poses a number of challenges in ensuring the security of the communication, something that is not easily done as many of the demands of network security conflict with the demands of mobile networks, mainly due to the nature of the mobile devices (e.g. low power consumption, low processing load).