http://www.csun.edu/~andrzej/COMP529-S05/papers/Mesh%20Networks%20Survey.pdf

Wireless mesh networks: a survey

Wireless mesh networks are an alternative technology for last-mile broadband Internet access. In WMNs, similar to ad hoc networks, each user node operates not only as a host but also as a router; user packets are forwarded to and from an Internet-connected gateway in multihop fashion. The meshed topology provides good reliability, market coverage, and scalability, as well as low upfront investments. Despite the recent startup surge in WMNs, much research remains to be done before WMNs realize their full potential. This article tackles the problem of determining the exact capacity of a WMN. The key concept we introduce to enable this calculation is the bottleneck collision domain, defined as the geographical area of the network that bounds from above the amount of data that can be transmitted in the network. We show that for WMNs the throughput of each node decreases as O(1/n), where n is the total number of nodes in the network. In contrast with most existing work on ad hoc network capacity, we do not limit our study to the asymptotic case. In particular, for a given topology and the set of active nodes, we provide exact upper bounds on the throughput of any node. The calculation can be used to provision the network, to ensure quality of service and fairness. The theoretical results are validated by detailed simulations.

The nominal capacity of wireless mesh networks

http://www.neetrac.gatech.edu/publications/Electric%20System%20Automation.pdf

A survey on communication networks for electric system automation

There is set forth herein a method of providing network connectivity. The method can include introducing a new communication device within a communication range of a portable data collection device, the new communication device comprising a dynamic access module enabling the new communication device to receive data packets from the portable data collection device and route payload data of the data packets to an access point. In one aspect the new communication device can receive data packets from the portable data collection device and route payload data of the data packets to the access point if the new communication device determines that it is in range of both of said access point and the portable data collection device. There is set forth herein a system having a dynamic access module.

Data collection device having dynamic access to multiple wireless networks

Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) are two communication protocol standards that define a physical layer and a MAC layer for wireless communications within a short range (from a few meters up to 100 m) with low power consumption (from less than 1 mW up to 100 mW). Bluetooth is oriented to connecting close devices, serving as a substitute for cables, while Wi-Fi is oriented toward computer-to-computer connections, as an extension of or substitution for cabled LANs. In this article we offer an overview of these popular wireless communication standards, comparing their main features and behaviors in terms of various metrics, including capacity, network topology, security, quality of service support, and power consumption.

http://ant.comm.ccu.edu.tw/course/94_WLAN/1_Papers_C/MAG,%20Bluetooth%20and%20Wi-Fi%20wireless%20protocols,%20a%20survey%20and%20a%20comparison.pdf

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless protocols: a survey and a comparison

The goal of this paper is to present exact formulae for the throughput of IEEE 802.11 networks in the absence of transmission errors and for various physical layers, data rates and packet sizes. Calculation of the throughput is more than a simple exercise. It is a mandatory part of provisioning any system based on 802.11 technology (whether in ad-hoc or infrastructure mode). We will discuss the practical importance of theoretical maximum throughput and present several applications.

/pdf/theoretical-maximum-throughput-of-ieee-802-11-and-its-4i5p4g6v7x.pdf

Theoretical maximum throughput of IEEE 802.11 and its applications

In multihop wireless networks, fair allocation of bandwidth among different nodes is one of the critical problems that affect the serviceability of the entire system. Although there is significant research on the fairness issues in single-hop wireless networks, research on multihop fairness is rarely found in the literature. We study various queuing schemes for multihop wireless networks and examine the fairness and throughput performance of each scheme. Each scheme offers a different degree of fairness. While relatively simple queuing schemes require less hardware and processing budget, they inevitably lack good fairness and performance. In contrast, the scheme that provides fairness requires per-flow (i.e., network-layer flow) queuing. Furthermore, we show that in order to achieve the optimal bandwidth utilization, the medium access control (MAC) layer should be able to support different priorities. Without such a MAC-layer QoS scheme, in the worst case, the bandwidth utilization can be degraded by O(N), where N is the number of end users. We theoretically investigate the pros and cons of different queuing schemes and verify the analytical results with detailed simulations.

Fairness and QoS in multihop wireless networks

MRP: Wireless mesh networks routing protocol

Scalable and reliable routing is a critical issue in sensor network deployment. A number of approaches have been proposed for sensor network routing, but sensor field implementation tends to be lacking in the literature. In our study, the problems of scalability and reliability in sensor network routing are addressed through a simple but powerful scheme implemented on Mica2 motes running TinyOS along with other, more widely-used routing protocols. Motes are tested in an outdoor sensor field, and detailed experiments are carried out for performance analysis. This paper presents the implementation details and the results obtained from head-to-head comparison of routing protocols. The proposed protocol delivers 93% of packets injected at a rate of one packet per second in networks with end to end hop distances of over 10 hops-a result which significantly improves upon results from the standard TinyOS routing implementation of MINTRoute. The promising results can be explained by the key protocol properties of reliability (via multi-path redundancy), scalability (with efficiently contained flooding), and flexibility (source-tunable per-packet priority) which are achieved without adding protocol complexity or resource consumption. These strengths enable the protocol to outperform even sophisticated link estimation based protocols especially in adverse outdoor sensor field environments.

Jangeun Jun

Papers

The nominal capacity of wireless mesh networks

Theoretical maximum throughput of IEEE 802.11 and its applications

Fairness and QoS in multihop wireless networks

MRP: Wireless mesh networks routing protocol

Scalable and Reliable Sensor Network Routing: Performance Study from Field Deployment