Wireless mesh network (WMN) is a type of self-healing, self-configuration, and peer-to-peer wireless network. Without expensive and fixed base stations, WMN can be established fast, easily, and flexibly at a low cost. The convenience and flexibility of establishing WMN brings a wide range of applications. The request of high bandwidth, high coverage and high transmission rate can be satisfied. Current research on WMN involves routing, resource allocation, mobility control, security and so on. With the increasing concern of green communication, improving energy efficiency is more and more important nowadays. As energy harvesting can overcome energy constraints and extend the network lifetime, it has attracted the great attention from many researchers when designing network. Further, WMN is an important networking mode in next-generation communication to guarantee the quality of service and reduce the networking complexity. Due to such importance, a survey of the research and development in WMN including the future research direction and opportunities is given in this paper.