History of Wireless Mesh Networking

History Of Wireless Mesh Networking

The core advantage of wireless mesh networks is their inherent ability to form a network on power up. Watch what happens in Fig 1, when the mesh nodes power up (green LED on box turns on). The nodes hear each other's broadcast and form a network. Also watch what happens when a node fails and how the nodes discover an alternate routing path. This healing is fully automatic.

Over the years, wireless mesh networking has seen three unique deployments based on radio technology, each incorporating iterative improvements allowing for greater scalability and higher network performance - both throughput and latency. This early stage of pre IEEE standard technological development is known as first Generation of Wireless Mesh. The following deployments are briefly described of various configurations of first generation Wireless Mesh Networking:

Winrich Hoseit of Cologne, Germany first described the "DIRC technology" (digital inter relay communication) with PCT patent No. DE 197 37 897 and DE 197 33 586. Because transmitted radio waves always interfere, the ratio of carrier to interference first had to be worked out. Hoseit also discovered how to prevent latency by transmitting single symbols rather than digital packages. (symbol stream switching). Each node collaborates with its neighbor-nodes via a control channel (CCH) to choose the frequency, time and energy with which to transmit each symbol. Only the final destination "understands" the application with the lowest possible latency.