An Overview of Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are communication networks which comprise radio nodes in which nodes are arranged in a mesh topology. Mesh topology is an interconnection of all nodes connected with all other nodes in the network. The network includes devices like nodes, clients, routers, gateways, etc. As the nodes are fully connected, mesh networks are usually less mobile as rerouting is less difficult in predicting the reroute results in delay in data transmission. Mesh clients can be of any wireless devices like cell phones, laptops, etc. The gateways which act as forwarding nodes may not be connected with the Internet. As different devices come under a single network, it is also referred as mesh cloud. WMN is self-healable. It works better with various different networks which include cellular networks and IEEE 802.11, 802.15, and 802.16 as well. WMN is flexible to work with more than one protocol. This chapter gives architecture, layer functionalities, and applications