Considerations for Wireless Mesh Network Products
Wireless mesh network products can be categorized, based on their underlying technical architecture and performance metrics, into Software-Defined Radio platforms and WiFi Mesh, as well as Broadband and Narrowband Mesh. Mesh network products based on Software-Defined Radio platforms leverage more modern antenna, coding, modulation/demodulation, and anti-jamming technologies at the physical layer for wireless transmission, achieving broadband, long-range, stable, and reliable communication. At the MAC/LLC data link layer, flexible access mechanisms, resource management, error control, flow control, and power control, combined with optimized routing design, neighbor maintenance, backoff windows, and adaptive transmission at the network/transport layer, provide unprecedented large-scale, high-capacity, efficient, secure, and flexible networking. WiFi Mesh products based on chipsets from Qualcomm and others offer advantages such as low cost, small form factor, and low power consumption.
A. Operating Environment & Communication Range
The flexible networking and robust transmission capabilities of wireless mesh networks make them particularly suitable for information transmission in complex terrains such as forests, lakes, remote mountains, wilderness, dense urban buildings, tunnels, culverts, and underground spaces.
The transmission range of wireless communication depends primarily on the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic waves in the operating frequency band. These include skywave, ground wave, space wave, and phenomena like direct path, reflection, diffraction, and scattering caused by different transmission media. Spatio-temporal variations due to rapid movement make radio wave propagation highly complex. Path loss, shadow fading, multipath effects, and the Doppler effect lead to large-scale slow fading and small-scale fast fading of the received signal. Secondly, the range is closely related to the transmission technologies employed by the product. Technologies like OFDM, Single-Carrier Frequency-Domain Equalization, MIMO, and Cooperative Communication significantly enhance broadband transmission range in complex environments.
B. Supported Services & Transmission Rate
Dedicated wireless communication devices can provide services including push-to-talk voice, various asynchronous data streams (e.g., for telemetry and location), IP data streams, and high-definition video. They support broadcast, multicast, and directional transmission. The transmission rate of a single point-to-point link can range from hundreds of Kbps, several Mbps, to over a hundred Mbps.
C. Network Scale & Multiple Hops
Theoretically, wireless mesh networks can support an unlimited number of nodes. In practice, the scale is limited by link rate/bandwidth and the overhead of transmitted information - especially public information related to nodes, links, routing, and protocols. As the number of nodes increases, this overhead can restrict the transmission of user data, thereby limiting the practical number of nodes and overall network scale.
Dynamic routing and multi-hop relaying are significant advantages of wireless mesh networks. Theoretically, the number of hops is also unlimited. Wireless mesh network nodes typically operate using Time Division Duplexing. The relaying function of a node radio is performed via store-and-forward repeating. This means that for each relay hop a data packet undergoes, an additional link transmission time is added. Consequently, after multiple hops, the effective end-to-end data transmission rate decreases. However, using frequency division multiplexing and spatial reuse, it's possible to maintain the transmission rate without further decrease after three hops.
D. Transmission Delay & Video Latency
When transmitting data through communication devices, the total processing and transmission time - from interface input, through encoding, modulation, transmission, reception, demodulation, decoding, to interface output - ranges from one millisecond to several tens of milliseconds, depending on the hardware platform and transmission protocol. For wireless mesh network radios, this delay is typically around 10 milliseconds.
For video transmission, the entire end-to-end latency - from the camera (tens of ms), video encoding (tens of ms), transmission/reception by the communication device (tens of ms), video decoding (tens of ms), to the display (tens of ms) - generally falls between slightly over one hundred milliseconds to three to five hundred milliseconds.
E. Anti-Jamming & Secure Communication
In radio communication, which transmits information via electromagnetic waves, jamming and anti-jamming are like spear and shield. Using band-pass filters to suppress out-of-band clutter and harmonics is a common anti-jamming measure in broadband communication. MimoMesh broadband mesh network radios employ time-domain digital filtering and MIMO smart antennas to effectively suppress out-of-band interference. Simultaneously, they support an intelligent frequency selection mode: when the operating frequency is jammed within a networked system, the device can automatically select an interference-free frequency for network transmission, effectively avoiding random interference. They also support an autonomous frequency-hopping mode, providing a set of working channels within the operating band, with the entire network hopping synchronously at high speed to effectively evade malicious interference. Furthermore, the radios employ transmission mechanisms like Forward Error Correction and ARQ error control to reduce the packet loss rate and enhance the reliability of data transmission.
Secure communication is achieved by setting parameters such as operating frequency, channel bandwidth, system code, communication range, and operating mode to exclude unauthorized access. The MimoMesh broadband mesh network radio, fully independently developed, utilizes custom waveforms, algorithms, and transmission protocols. The over-the-air transmission employs 64-bit keys capable of dynamically generating scrambling sequences for channel encryption. It supports DES56/AES128/AES256 source encryption for enhanced security. Additionally, the radio provides hardware encryption options via chips, TF cards, and dedicated encryption devices.
Considerations for Wireless Mesh Network Products
by sdruav.com
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