Abstract
In the interest of full disclosure, Auerbach Publications is a member of the Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
As appropriate for a handbook, this is a collection of short entries on specific aspects of the topics presented. The book is clearly divided into three sections: ad hoc wireless networks, sensor networks, and peer-to-peer networks. I did not clearly recognize the names of all the authors, but recognized enough of the contributors to feel secure that the editor had a high standard for choosing contributors.
Upon receiving this book, I was rather skeptical. I am not familiar with Dr. Wu and the title seemed to imply that the book would be a random jumble of trendy topics. Especially since these are trendy topics that interest me, I expected to be very disappointed with the contents. After all, there is more than enough research on any of these topics to more than fill several volumes of this size. Why merge them? Would any topic be handled in any adequate depth?
In spite of myself, I became convinced of the utility of this book. Although this handbook does not explicitly consider the convergence of these fields, the choice of topics does lead the reader to see the fuzzy edges between them. The similarity between ad hoc and peer-to-peer networks is probably the most obvious. There is an inherent lack of centralization but a need for cooperation within the system.
I enjoyed the book. The technical contents were all of high quality. The choice of topics was interesting. It contains many items in these realms that I was not familiar with. I found the material to be written as easy to follow tutorials. But the choice of topics was sufficiently eclectic that I feel that researchers will not find that it repeats information that they already know by heart.
Although the price seems a bit high to me in comparison with its competitors, this volume would be worth purchasing.