What if cellular operators did not have to put up base stations or towers across a city for providing mobile services? What if PCs in an office or within a closed-user group could talk to each other without being wired? This could become a reality if research being conducted by Alcatel in Marcousis, France, on ad hoc networking is successful.
Ad hoc networking enables transmission of information, voice or data, between peers. For instance, with ad hoc networking, cellphone signals will be transmitted from one handset to another till the information reaches the predetermined mobile user. In effect, each of the handsets acts as a transmitter that relays the information to the nearest handset.