Wireless communication is without a doubt a very
desirable service as emphasized by the tremendous growth
in both cellular and wireless local area networks (WLANs)
(primarily, the ones that are compliant with the IEEE
802.11 family of standards, popularly known as Wi-Fi).
However, these two radically different technologies address
only a narrow range of connectivity needs, and there
are numerous other applications that can benefit from
wireless connectivity. The cellular networks offer wide
area coverage, but the service is relatively expensive and
offers low data rates: even the third generation of cellular
networks (3G) offers (at best) low data rates (2Mbps)
compared to WLANs (>50Mbps for IEEE 802.11a and
802.11g and 100Mbps for proprietary solutions at the
time of this writing). On the other hand, the WLANs
have rather limited coverage (and the associated reduced
mobility). Furthermore, in order to increase the coverage
of WLANs, a wired backbone connecting multiple access
points is required.
choices offer different opportunities to emerging companies
in this emerging area. In this article, we will present an
introduction to wireless mesh networks and present both the
benefits enabled by this technology and the main hurdles that
have to be overcome.