Self-Organization in Ad Hoc Networks: Overview and Classification

Self-organization is a great concept for building scalable systems consisting of huge numbers of subsystems. The primary objectives are coordination and collaboration on a global goal. Until now, many self-organization methods have been developed for communication networks in general and ad hoc networks in particular. Nevertheless, the term self-organization is still often misunderstood or misused. This paper contributes to the ad hoc community by providing a better understanding of self-organization in ad hoc networks. Primarily, solutions for the medium access contol and the network layer are analyzed and discussed. The main contribution of this paper is a categorization of self-organization methodologies. Additionally, well-known methods in ad hoc networks are classified and some case studies are provided