Ad-hoc networking with low-cost devices: how to do it right

Although simple wireless communication involving nodes built of microcontrollers and radio devices from the low end of the price spectrum is quite popular these days, one seldom hears about serious wireless networks built from such devices. Commercially available nodes for ad-hoc networking (somewhat inappropriately called “motes”) are in fact quite serious computers with tens of megabytes of RAM and rather extravagant resource demands. We show how one can build practical adhoc networks using the smallest and cheapest devices available today. In our networks, such devices are capable of sustaining swarm-intelligent sophisticated routing while offering enough processing power to cater to complex applications involving distributed sensing and monitoring.