Benefits and Limitations of Spatial Reuse in Wireless Mesh Networks

Local area wireless networks are based on the cell topology: clients associate to one of several access points, which are connected using a wired backbone. As high data rates are only available close to the access points, a dense infrastructure is needed. This results in high costs, especially for the installation of the wired backbone. A wireless mesh network can be used to reduce the deployment costs by connecting only few access points to the backbone; mesh nodes extend the coverage by forwarding data over wireless hops. Since the wireless medium has to be shared by the nodes, multi-hop traffic requires a high capacity. Hence, mechanisms which increase the system capacity in wireless mesh networks are needed.