Solar Powered WLAN Mesh Network Provisioning for Temporary Deployments

WLAN mesh networks are often installed to provide wireless coverage for temporary events. In many of these cases, the WLAN mesh nodes can be operated using an energy sustainable source such as solar power. Node resource assignment consists of provisioning each node with a solar panel and battery combination that is sufficient to prevent node outage for the duration of the deployment. In this paper we consider this resource assignment problem with the objective of minimizing the total battery cost for a given energy source assignment. A methodology and algorithms for determining this resource assignment are first given. We then study the problem in the presence of shortest path and energy aware routing. To evaluate the quality of the resource assignments, we develop a linear programming formulation which gives lower bounds on the network resource assignment. Competitive ratios for different routing algorithms are then used, which demonstrates their effectiveness. We also include the case where some of the deployed nodes are designated in advance as having a continuous power source. Our results show the resource savings which are possible using the design algorithms and the potential resource assignment benefits of energy aware routing.