A Comparative Study between Wireless Local Area Networks and Wireless Mesh Networks

Due to Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA)´s marketing, 802.11 became a universal solution for wireless connectivity. However, still a WLAN depends on wired infrastructure that interconnects the central Access Points (APs). To become independent of backbone networks leading to cheap deployments, the traditional single-hop approach needs to be replaced by Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). With 802.11s an integrated WMN approach is under development that adds the necessary functionality for interworking, security and routing. 802.11s is an extension to 802.11 to provide multi-hop networking. In this paper, we compare the 802.11 and 802.11s standard in terms of objectives, applications, architecture, physical layer (multiple radios), MAC layer protocols, Routing algorithms, different security requirements in Wireless mesh networks than 802.11 WLAN and at the last the need of cross layer design in WMN is explained.