Collaborative mesh networking for low cost wireless coverage in rural areas

This paper proposes collaborative mesh networking as an alternative to the conventional multi-hop mesh networks for wireless connectivity in rural areas. The proposed method integrates a collaborative transmit beamforming technique in a wireless mesh network. As opposed to the approach of multi-hop mesh, where each node takes turn as a relay station to forward messages to the next node, collaborative mesh elects a few nodes to collaboratively relay a message synchronously. This provides increased receive power at the receiving end, thereby enabling better receive signal quality and longer transmission range. End-to-end performance comparisons in terms of bit error rate and packet loss probability under different scenarios are presented. Results show that collaborative mesh networks can achieve better performance and wider coverage as compared to the conventional multi-hop mesh networks.