On the Performance of Hybrid Wireless/Wired Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) transparently extends the coverage of a portal via Mesh Points (MPs) which relay data over multiple hops to the associated stations. While this concept lowers costly wire installations, capacity is reduced by the multiple transmissions. Therefore, multiple portals are needed to limit the route length, resulting in a wireless network supported by a wired backbone. In this paper, the authors analyze how the variation of the average ratio of MPs per portal affects the network performance. To do so, a realistic system model is defined which incorporates the typical characteristics of a wireless link based on IEEE 802.11a. Then, they use an analytical framework which allows to compute the capacity in an arbitrary network topology under the conditions of the system model.