Capacity, architecture, protocols, and sensing in wireless networks

In recent years there has been much interest in mobile ad hoc wireless networks. More recently, there has been great interest in mesh networks which are essentially stationary ad hoc networks. Also the focus of much recent interest are wireless sensor networks that are formed by nodes with environmental sensing capability as well as computational and wireless communication capability. Since actuation closely follows sensing we anticipate that a next phase of the information technology revolution could be the convergence of control, i.e., sensing and actuation, with communication and computation. We give a brief account of some issues of interest in each of these areas.