Enabling large-scale wireless broadband

Abstract

The vision is tantalizing: a high-performance, scalable, and widely deployed wireless Internet that facilitates services ranging from radically new and unforeseen applications to true wireless "broadband" to residences and public spaces at rates of 10s of Mb/sec. However, while high-speed wireless access is easy to achieve in an enterprise network via low-cost IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) access points, wireless technology in public spaces is in its infancy. "Hot spots" provide high-speed wireless access, but do so in very few isolated "islands" at immense costs. Likewise, while fixed wireless (e.g. LMDS) and 3G can provide ubiquitous coverage and 3G can support mobility, throughputs can often be two orders of magnitude slower than WiFi.In this paper, we formulate the challenges of building a highperformance, scalable and widely deployed wireless Internet along 10 premises. We make the case for the requirement of a fundamental new architecture based on beamforming antennas deployed on fixed, wire-powered Transit Access Points (TAPs) that form a multi-hopping wireless backbone with a limited number of wired ingress/egress points. To address scalability, deployability, and performance challenges we present distributed, opportunistic and coordinated resource management problems and a novel "network is the channel" framework that searches for fundamental information-theoretic tradeoffs between protocol overhead and capacity.

DMesh: Incorporating Practical Directional Antennas in Multichannel Wireless Mesh Networks

“…Many design issues of WMNs have been studied [2], [17]- [19] and many companies are offering products for deploying WMNs [4], [20]. The use of multiple radios has been proposed as a means to increase the throughput of wireless networks [1], [2], [18], [21], [22].…”

“…The use of multiple radios has been proposed as a means to increase the throughput of wireless networks [1], [2], [18], [21], [22]. Multiple beamformed antennas were previously proposed in a position paper [17] for the TAPs architecture. In contrast to DMesh, TAPs proposes to use significantly costlier smart beamforming antennas but may provide higher spatial reuse.…”

Accurate Assessment of Link Loss Rate in Wireless Mesh Networks

“…A number of interesting applications or systems have emerged and some are commercially available based on such wireless networks [2][3][4]. Many on-going research projects aim to enhance WMN's performance.…”

Securely Deliver Data by Multi-path Routing Scheme in Wireless Mesh Networks

“…Along with Mobile Ad-hoc Network, Wireless Mesh Network recently has attracted increasing attention thank for the low-cost deployment and topology flexibility [2]. WMN represent a good solution to providing wireless Internet connectivity in a large scale.…”