Scalability in Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is emerging as a prominent technology for next-generation broadband wireless networking. They have distinct advantages over current wireless networks and because of the promise they hold, research and development in this area is progressing rapidly. However, studies in the recent past have noted that WMNs have shortcomings and the technical issues are being addressed both in the industry and academia for successful deployment for a variety of applications.This chapter provides a detailed survey about scalability – one of the major deciding factors for any new networking technology to be accepted, deployed and to evolve continuously. It is now well known that available ad hoc wireless networking protocols are not scalable for WMNs. This chapter discusses the various factors that impact scalability of WMNs and presents a detailed study of various current and ongoing research efforts in the different aspects of networking such as network architecture, physical layer, MAC layer and network layer that aim to improve scalability in large-scale WMNs. Various improvements to existing wireless ad hoc protocols, wireless sensor network protocols and revisiting of protocol designs from the perspective of WMNs and scalability are discussed with an emphasis on open research issues among the protocols. Other aspects in network design and deployment that aim to improve scalability are also discussed.