Deploying Mesh Networks Through Public Transport

Mesh networks extend the reach of wireless wide area communications infrastructure, without the need for costly (and socially undesirable) masts and base stations. In many urban areas, one can envisage the emergence of a mesh of WiFi (or WiMax) based cells centered around homes, initially using xDSL to provide backhaul, but once a critical density is reached, providing multi-hop connectivity without recourse to any infrastructure - pushing the costs of a network onto the community is potentially good in terms of distributed power, management, resilience and incremental roll out. On the other hand, until the critical density is reached, there is no network. By contrast, a single flag day deployment can be achieved by shipping access points as part of public transport vehicles and stops - in this talk we describe the results of models developed in Cambridge for such a network built over a Taxi system in a medium sized city. Extensions to designs for Buses in a larger city are discussed.