Security and quality of service in ad hoc wireless networks have recently become very important and actively researched topics because of a growing demand to support live streaming audio and video in civilian as well as military applications. While a couple of books have appeared recently that deal with ad hoc networks, a comprehensive book that deals with security and QoS has not yet appeared. I am confident that this book will fill that void.

The book grew out of a need to provide reading material in the form of book chapters to graduate students taking an advanced wireless networking course that I was teaching at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Some of these book chapters then subsequently appeared as chapters in handbooks and survey papers in journals.

This book contains eight chapters in total, of which five chapters deal with various aspects of security for wireless networks. I have devoted only one chapter to the quality of service issue. Chapter 1 introduces basic concepts related to an ad hoc network, sets the scene for the entire book by discussing the vulnerabilities such networks face, and then produces a set of security requirements that these networks need to satisfy to live up to the challenges imposed by the vulnerabilities. Chapter 1 also introduces basic concepts regarding quality of service as it relates to ad hoc networks.