Wireless Mesh Networks

Roland Piquepaille writes "Robert Poor is CTO of Ember Corporation. He contends that point-to-point or point-to-multipoint networks typical of industrial wireless communications systems have limited scalability and reliability. 'In contrast, wireless mesh networks are multihop systems in which devices assist each other in transmitting packets through the network, especially in adverse conditions. You can drop these ad-hoc networks into place with minimal preparation, and they provide a reliable, flexible system that can be extended to thousands of devices.' The article is pretty technical and contains several illustrations and a case study about the deployment of a wireless mesh network in a water treatment plant. Check this column for Poor's conclusions or read this Sensors article if you have more time."

Comments

Flash demos of mesh networks

[suqur]

You can find a couple of demonstrations of how mesh networks can actually work and be implemented in cities and companies on MeshNetworks' homepage. Very cool how the p2p works....

Re:Good till everyone has one...

[James_Duncan8181]

Yes, but the issue is what happens when the network density increases. There is only so much spectrum you can use for bandwidth, so if me, my next door neighbour, the whole street and their dog have a wireless link, our connection speeds all go down big time. This is the reason that cellphone networks sometimes have problems placing your call, even with digital compression. You thought contention on a wired network is bad? You'd better just be hoping this doesn't catch on as spectrum is *VERY* limited.