IEEE 802.11s MAC Fundamentals

The tremendous success of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standard led to severe competition. Due to Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA)'s marketing, 802.11 became a universal solution for wireless connectivity. However, still a WLAN depends on wired infrastructure that interconnects the central Access Points (APs). To become independent of backbone networks leading to cheap deployments, the traditional single-hop approach needs to be replaced by Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). Since several years, the research community develops routing protocols designed for wireless multi-hop networks. With 802.11s an integrated WMN approach is under development that adds the necessary functionality for interworking, security and routing.