The specific application of ad-hoc network is a form of the wireless sensor network, that participates to achieve smart sensing work where the nodes are smart sensors. This modern technology has been used innovatively in many sensing applications and observations in various domains - medical, banking security, and industry. MANET, referred to as a Mobile ad-hoc network, is a kind of ad-hoc network which depends on a set of auto-configuring mobile wireless points that are linked to change locations. for this large range of applications, and has been a promising and innovative research scope. The objective of the present study is to analytically review the previous studies and propose a path for the future. The proposed method used in this paper to analyze previous studies uses the content analysis approach. Furthermore, the limitations of wireless sensor networks include memory storage, the power of the battery, computational work, and range of communication in their system resources, which outline their defense against threats and performance. Based on the results, the present finding was that eleven types of research discussed the black hole attack in a wireless sensor network in different case studies.