Ad hoc networks are today among the most active research topics in the area of Mobile and Wireless communication. Yet, many technical issues do not have sound general solutions applicable to all ad hoc networks. For many others, the general solutions for ad hoc networks might be too inefficient for specific application classes.

Rather than looking for General Ad Hoc Networks and Systems (GAHNS), which provide one-size-fits-all general solutions in the area of ad hoc networking and systems, we want to stimulate the application-oriented divide-and-conquer approach to ad hoc networking research. The goal is to provide sound, efficient specialized ad hoc networks and systems (SAHNS) suitable for building solutions specific for well-defined classes of applications. It is expected that SAHNS, thanks to exploiting salient features of their application areas, will result in overcoming barriers that make GAHNS-based solutions technically infeasible or inefficient.

Opportunistic networks (oppnets in short) are a kind of SAHNS, suitable for Emergency Preparedness and Response. Oppnets constitute the category of networks where diverse foreign devices, node clusters or networks-not employed originally as nodes of an originally deployed seed oppnet-are invited to join the seed to become their helpers. Significantly, these helpers can be employed opportunistically at low or even no cost. By integrating helpers into its fold, a seed oppnet grows into an expanded oppnet, the goal being to leverage the wealth of pervasive resources and capabilities that are within their reach.

In this talk, I will introduce oppnets and will present their current state-of-the-art research and related challenges. These include: (1) Motivation for specialized ad hoc networks, (2) Analogy to a human emergency response team, (3) Oppnets as a new type of specialized ad hoc networks, and (4) Oppnets related research and challenges.

Presenter's Biography

Isaac Woungang received his M.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Mathematics from the Université de la Méditerranée-Aix Marseille II, France, and the Université du Sud, Toulon et Var, France, in 1990 and 1994 respectively. In 1999, he received M. A. Sc from the INRS-Materials and Telecommunications, University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada. From 1999 to 2002, he worked as a software engineer at Nortel Networks. Since 2002, he has been with Ryerson University, where he is an assistant professor of Computer Science. In 2004, he founded the Distributed Applications and Broadband NEtworks Laboratory (DABNEL) R&D group. His research interests are Telecommunications network design, Network security, Business information systems design, and Coding theory. Dr. Woungang is also the Co-op Faculty Coordinator and Adjunct Professor at CUSB School of Translation University of Manitoba.

Dr. Woungang serves as the Chief-Editor for International Journal of Communication Networks & Distributed Systems, an Inderscience publication, UK, Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Information and Coding Theory, U.K and editor, of International Journal of Communication Systems, Wiley.

He is the Chair of Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) 2008, workshop and Editor of Handbook of Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks, to be published by Springer (London), 2008, Handbook of Wireless Mesh Networks, to be published by Springer (London), 2008. Call for Chapters: Handbook of Information and Coding Theory, to be published by World Scientific (Singapore), 2008 and Handbook of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, to be published by World Scientific (Singapore), 2008.

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