Wireless mesh networks are multihop networks of wireless router platforms. A mesh network can provide multihop communication paths between wireless clients – serving as a community network or as a broadband access network for the Internet. Wireless mesh networks are considered cost-effective alternatives to wireless LANs, as there is no necessity to deploy any wired infrastructure to support a mesh network. There are several technical challenges that must be addressed for mesh networking to be as effective as any other form of broadband networking. Much of these challenges relate to multihop wireless communication and limited capacity. This tutorial is designed to introduce essential mesh networking concepts, lay down the technological challenges and describe how the research community is addressing them. We will explore the issues associated to each layer of the protocol stack as well as various cross-layer approaches. We will also discuss the experiences and lessons learnt from various experimental testbeds - academic and industrial. Techniques to build simple mesh network platforms will be explained. We will also discuss about the ongoing standardization efforts (IEEE 802.11s) and commercial advances in the area.
Tutorial Outline
• Introduction
o - Motivations
o - Architectures
• Applications
o - Community networking
o - Last mile access network
o - Support for voice/video
• Routing Layer
o - Multihop routing – routing protocols
o - Designing routing metrics
o - Access and handoff issues
• Link Layer
o - Basic CSMA/CA based MAC protocols – IEEE 802.11, limitations
o - Use of multiple channels – multichannel MAC protocols
o - Use of multiple radios – channel assignment
o - Cross layer issues: joint channel assignment and routing
• Physical Layer
o - Use of directional antenna
o - Transmit power control
o - Cross layer issues: protocols to utilize directional antennas and transmit power control
• Transport protocols
o - Impact of wireless transmission errors on TCP performance
o - Issues with multihop wireless networks
o - Issues with mobility
o - Various solution approaches
• Issues spanning all layers
o - Capacity
o - Fairness and QoS
o - Security
o - Network management and monitoring
• Testbeds, commercial Products and standards
o - Mesh testbeds in academic and industrial research labs
o - Lessons learnt
o - Building your own testbed
o - Commercial mesh networking products
o - Activities in IEEE 802.11s ESS mesh working group
o - WiMAX and its potential role
Targeted Audience
The tutorial will benefit attendees from both industry and academia who are interested in the core challenges in wireless mesh networking and the current state of the art in this field. The tutorial will cover all important technical concepts in the field. Basic understanding of computer networking is required to benefit fully from the tutorial.
Biographies:
Dr. Prasant Mohapatra
Prasant Mohapatra received his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 1993. He was an assistant professor and then an associate professor at Iowa State University from 1993 to 1999, and then at Michigan State University till 2001. Since then he has been at University of California, Davis, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Mohapatra has published extensively in various international journals and conferences. He has been an invited speaker at several universities and other organizations in several countries. He has given several tutorials in various international venues, and has taught several advanced courses in computer networks, wireless networks, performance evaluation, and multimedia systems. His research work has been funded and collaborated by National Science Foundation, SIEMENS, EMC Corporation, Panasonic Technologies, Hewlett Packard, Rockwell International, and Intel Corporation. He was/is on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on computers, ACM WINET, and Ad Hoc Networks. He has been on the program/organizational committees of several international conferences. He was the Program Vice-Chair of INFOCOM 2004 and MASS 2004, and the Program Co-Chair of the First IEEE International Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON 2004). He is also the Co-Chair of the First IEEE Workshop on Wireless Mesh (WiMesh 2005). He has been a Guest Editor for IEEE Network, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and the IEEE Computer.
Dr. Samir Das
Samir R. Das is currently an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department in the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1994. His research interests include wireless ad hoc and sensor networking, performance evaluation and parallel discrete event simulation. He has about sixty refereed research articles on these topics. Dr. Das has received the U.S. National Science Foundation’s CAREER award in 1998. He has been a speaker in the Distinguished Visitor program of the IEEE Computer Society during 2001-03. He co-chaired the program committee for the 2001 ACM Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoC) and 2004 ACM International Conference on Mobile computing and Networking (MobiCom), and serves on the editorial board of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM/Kluwer Wireless Networks Journal and Ad Hoc Networks journal.
Mr. Steven Conner
W. Steven Conner is a Wireless Network Architect in the Communications Technology Lab, Intel Corporate Technology Group. He has been with Intel since 1999 and currently leads a team developing self-configuring wireless mesh networking technology. Steven is the Technical Editor of the IEEE 802.11s Mesh Networking standard and is an active participant in IEEE 802.11 standards development. His current research interests include wireless mesh networking, sensor networks, and network self-configuration protocols. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Arizona. |
