Introduce basic concepts and highlights of Wireless mesh Networks (1)

Wireless mesh networks are emerging wireless networks. It is quite different from the well-known WLAN. This article will introduce the features and advantages of the Wireless mesh Network in detail. Hope to help you.

A wireless mesh network consists of meshrouters routers and meshclients clients. meshrouters forms a backbone network and is connected to a wired internet network to provide multi-hop Wireless internet connections for meshclients. A wireless Mesh network, also known as "multi-hop", is a new wireless network technology that is completely different from a traditional wireless network.

In traditional wireless LAN (WLAN), each client accesses the network through a wireless link connected to the AP. If you want to communicate with each other, you must first access a fixed access point (AP). This network structure is called a single hop Network. In a wireless Mesh network, any wireless device node can act as both an AP and a router. each node in the network can send and receive signals, each node can communicate directly with one or more peer nodes. The biggest benefit of this structure is that if the recent AP is congested due to heavy traffic, the data can be automatically routed to a nearby node with low communication traffic. Based on the network conditions, data packets can be routed to the nearest node for transmission until the final destination is reached. This method is multi-hop access.

In fact, the well-known Internet is a typical example of a Mesh network. For example, when we send an E-mail, the email is not directly sent to the recipient's mailbox, but forwarded from one server to another through the router, finally, the user's mailbox is reached only after multiple route forwarding. During the forwarding process, the router generally selects the most efficient transmission path, so that the email can arrive at the user's mailbox as soon as possible. Compared with traditional switched networks, wireless Mesh networks remove the need for wiring between nodes, but still have the redundancy mechanism and re-routing function provided by distributed networks. In a wireless Mesh network, if you want to add a new device, you only need to simply connect to the power, it can automatically configure itself, and determine the best multi-hop transmission path. When a device is added or a mobile device is added, the network can automatically detect topology changes and adjust communication routes to obtain the most effective transmission path.

Mesh Network's five advantages

Compared with traditional WLAN, wireless Mesh networks have the following incomparable advantages:

1. Fast deployment and easy installation. Installing Mesh nodes is very simple. Just remove the device from the box and connect it to the power supply. As the installation is greatly simplified, users can easily add new nodes to expand the coverage and network capacity of the wireless network. In a wireless Mesh network, not every Mesh node requires a wired cable connection, which is the biggest difference between it and a wired AP. Mesh is designed to minimize the number of wired devices and APS, thus greatly reducing the total cost of ownership and installation time. The cost savings brought by this alone are considerable. The configuration and other network management functions of the wireless Mesh network are the same as those of the traditional WLAN. the user experience of WLAN can be easily applied to the Mesh network.

2. NLOS ). The use of wireless Mesh Technology can easily Implement NLOS configuration, so it has a wide range of application prospects in outdoor and public places. Users with direct line of sight with the transmitting station receive wireless signals first, and then forward the received signals to non-direct line of sight users. In this way, the signal can automatically select the optimal path to continuously jump from one user to another, and finally reach the target user without direct line of sight. In this way, users with direct line of sight actually provide wireless broadband access for nearby users without direct line of sight. The non-line-of-sight transmission feature of the wireless Mesh network greatly extends the application and coverage of wireless broadband.

3. robustness. A common way to achieve network robustness is to use multiple routers to transmit data. If a router fails, the information is transmitted by another router through the backup path. E-mail is an example in which the mail information is divided into several data packets, sent over the Internet by multiple routers, and finally assembled into the information in the user's inbox. Mesh networks are more robust than single hop networks because they do not depend on the performance of a single node. In a single hop Network, if a node fails, the entire network will be paralyzed. In the Mesh network structure, each node has one or several data transmission paths. If a fault or interference occurs on the nearest node, the data packet is automatically routed to the backup path for further transmission. The entire network is not affected.