Seamless integration of unidirectional broadcast links into QoS-constrained broadband Wireless Mesh Access Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have matured in recent years. They allow two nodes to communicate via multiple hops when no direct connectivity exists. This allows community networks such as Freifunk to provide affordable Internet access to their communities by sharing a few gateway nodes. Increasing demand for multi-media content poses a challenge for the typical WMN routing protocols such a optimised link state routing (OLSR) which lack quality of service (QoS) support. Although, numerous solutions have been proposed to introduce QoS awareness such as, those WMNs fail to meet commercial operator requirements in term of reliability and QoS guarantees. In this paper we propose the seamless integration of broadcast technologies such as digital video broadcast (DVB) to introduce support for high-bandwidth multi-media services.