Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless telemedicine using GSM and GPRS technologies can only provide low bandwidth connections, which makes it difficult to transmit images and video. Satellite or 3G wireless transmission provides greater bandwidth, but the running costs are high. Wireless networks (WLANs) appear promising, since they can supply high bandwidth at low cost. However, the WLAN technology has limitations, such as coverage. A new wireless networking technology named the Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) overcomes some of the limitations of the WLAN. A WMN combines the characteristics of both a WLAN and ad hoc networks, thus forming an intelligent, large scale and broadband wireless network.