IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol over wireless mesh networks: problems and perspectives

The wireless mesh network has been an emerging technology in recent years. Because the transmission medium used in networking backhaul APs is radio, the wireless mesh network is not only easy and cost effective in deployment, but also has good scalability in coverage area and capacity. The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol has been adopted as the de-facto medium access control. In this paper, we assess the fitness of the IEEE 802.11 over wireless mesh networks. We focus on the question: Does the backhaul networking of a wireless mesh network have the capability to support multimedia transport? The backhaul must guarantee the throughput and the latency. Furthermore, the QoS guarantee is required for multimedia applications. We contend that it is really necessary to consider what the key is to be changed in the IEEE 802.11 so that it can adapt the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol to wireless mesh networks. Through the study of existing solutions, we analyze the previous work and sketch the contours of the directions to achieve our goal in this article.