Wireless broadband provisioning using single radio multihop Wi-Fi systems with chain topology

Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) based multihop system can be used to provide much larger radio coverage in the provisioning of broadband wireless access (BWA) as compared to the conventional Wi-Fi access point implementation. A special case of such multihop system is the chain topology which is commonly used for broadband provisioning along road site. Measurements were carried out to determine the performance of an IEEE 802.11b based off-the-shelf outdoor Wi-Fi mesh product which was arranged in a chain topology. The result obtained provides an estimate on the number of subscribers that can be supported and the number of Wi-Fi multihop routers required per square km for deployment. The result is also useful in determining a practical value for the maximum number of hops in a realistic implementation scenario.