Guest editorial: algorithmic solutions for wireless, mobile, ad hoc and sensor networks

The field of wireless and mobile computing is an important and research challenging area of computing today. This has been made possible due to the tremendous and continued growth of wireless technology, creating the need of ubiquitous distributed services: anywhere and anytime. In addition to wireless networks based on a pre-existing infrastructure, where wireless communications take place only between the end-nodes and the access points, mobile ad hoc wireless networks and sensor networks are emerging rapidly. Such networks do not need any insfrastructure to work, but they comprise mobile clients as well as mobile servers, and they pose challenges in diverse areas such as network topology control, routing and security, resource placement, allocation and discovery, energy consumption, and media access. In this scenario, there is a great need of algorithmic solutions to realize and maintain high-speed, high-performance, cost-effective, energy-efficient and reliable wireless networks. This special issue brings together contributions in discrete algorithms, optimization techniques, and performance evaluation methods in the context of wireless, ad-hoc, and sensor networks. More than 60 papers were submitted, out of which only the 16 papers below have been selected for publication. These papers do not cover all aspects that belong to the scope of this special issue. However, they represent interesting research efforts and subjects that definitely belong to the core research on algorithmic solutions for wireless, mobile, ad hoc, and sensor networks. The first three papers deal with the network topology control problem. dynamically maintains measures on the quality of the coverage of a sensor network. shows how to assign power values in ad hoc networks to obtain a graph topology satisfying some specified important properties. The paper " Wireless ATM Layouts for Chain Networks " , by M. Flammini, G. Gambosi and A. Navarra, integrates the benefits of the ATM technology with the wireless communication, and studies the existence of optimal layouts for special network topologies. The next two papers consider the problem of routing in ad hoc networks. The paper " Ad Hoc Multicast Routing Algorithm with Swarm Intelligence " , by C.-C. Shen and C. Jaikaeo, proposes a novel idea for multicast routing based on Swarm Intelligence that refers to complex behaviors that arise from very simple individual behaviors and interactions. develops a location based routing protocol and presents a detailed analysis of this routing protocol. The next three papers study the issues of placement, allocation and discovery of resources in …