Architecture and evaluation of an unplanned 802.11b mesh network

This paper evaluates the ability of a wireless mesh archi-tecture to provide high performance Internet access while demanding little deployment planning or operational man-agement. The architecture considered in this paper has un-planned node placement (rather than planned topology), omni-directional antennas (rather than directional links), and multi-hop routing (rather than single-hop base stations). These design decisions contribute to ease of deployment, an important requirement for community wireless networks. However, this architecture carries the risk that lack of plan-ning might render the network's performance unusably low. For example, it might be necessary to place nodes carefully to ensure…

• IT
  Industrial Technology Research Institute