Can wireless mesh networking carry long-distance communications?

Tu, Wanqing

Abstract

Many regard wireless mesh networking as a potential key technology to provide low-cost Internet over a specific coverage area.

A wireless mesh network (WMN) consists of mesh gateways, mesh routers, and mesh clients. Mesh gateways and mesh routers have fixed power supplies and minimal mobility. Via wireless channels, they form a multi-hop mesh topology, offering backbone connectivity to end user devices.

The One Laptop per Child initiative, which enables students in low-income economies to access content and media, is just one of many early examples of the capacity and uses of the technology.

Wireless mesh networking offers some nice advantages compared to its competitors.

Resilient communications — mesh topologies are rich in connections. Resilience not only resides in the fact that multiple available paths exist between communication nodes but also the self-healing ability to automatically seek the fastest and most reliable alternative routes if part of the network goes down.
Low financial cost — mesh gateways and mesh routers are affordable devices. The operational cost of these devices and mesh topology is also low, which benefits business cases with high volume.
Flexible scale — WMNs can easily scale up to provide connections to users across a wider area. This is achieved by simply attaching more mesh gateways or mesh routers to the mesh backbone.
Even though the technology is still in its early stages, there has been a lot of research into WMNs, particularly looking at how well mesh networking can support long-distance wireless communication. We, a collaborative of five university researchers across three continents, are also interested in answering this question for the purpose of using the technology as a low-cost medium for multimedia multicasting applications.

This blog post discusses a potentially more effective way to address the ongoing challenge of performance degradation over multiple wireless hops that our team has contributed to this ongoing field of research.

Citation

Tu, W. (2018). Can wireless mesh networking carry long-distance communications?. [Blog Post]

• Other Type: Other
• Online Publication Date: May 4, 2018
• Publication Date: May 4, 2018
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2023
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1788609
• Related Public URLs: https://blog.apnic.net/2018/05/04/can-wireless-mesh-networking-carry-long-distance-communications/