Preface

`Chance ' seems to play a role in several phenomena in society and nature. Many of these phenomena can be approximately described by stochastic models. A particular one is the Poisson random connection model. The Poisson random connection model is associated with a random network. Both the positions of the points in the network and the connections between the points are random. Points are randomly scattered in space according to a Poisson point process. Each pair of points has some probability of being connected by a line. The probability of existence of a line between two points decreases as the distance between the two points increases. Observe that the network falls into disjoint connected components. It seems that the Poisson random connection model was studied for the rst time by Gilbert (1961), in a very applied fashion. Originally the Poisson random connection model was introduced as a model of wireless communication networks. Points represent transmitting stations and lines represent com-munication channels. The nodes in the network cooperate in routing each other's packets, so that packets are transmitted in a multi-hop fashion from source to destination. Thus