WLAN mesh networking architecture with multiple mash portals

Abstract

Ad-hoc Network is a dynamic multi-hop wireless network that is established without infrastructure network acceding to a user requirement. Exemplary applications in Ad-hoc network are military field, environment monitoring and emergency repairs. WLAN Mesh Network (WMN), a newly proposed wireless network structure, inherits the dynamic self-organization and self-configuration characteristics from Ad-hoc network. In WMN, APs are permitted as wireless backbone devices to communicate each other without access to the wired infrastructure network. In most wireless local area network (WLAN) deployments today, most portable stations get a number of services through APs. Thus, WMN should consider the seamless connection with infrastructure network. The Mesh Portal, a component of WMN, has a roll to connect between wired network and wireless mesh network. The expansibility is the greatest advantage of WNN, but then one Mesh Portal can be a bottleneck device. To provide unhindered access to users, the arrangement of multiple Mesh Portals should be considered in WMN. However, multiple Mesh Portals can make ``Broadcast Loops/Storm`` problems and ``Frame Duplication & Unnecessary Route Request/Reply``, because the MAC protocol and the frame format are different between WMN and wired network, the Mesh Portal as a bridge device, can not filter the broadcast frames and users can utilize multiple Mesh Portals without any restriction. In this thesis, we suggest ``Mesh domain`` protocol for supporting multiple Mesh Portals without forecasted problems to satisfy user traffics which are almost going to infrastructure network. Also, to improve wireless mesh network performance with multiple Mesh Portals, we propose load-balanced multi-hop grouping (LBMG) protocol to distribute aggregated traffics between multiple Mesh Portals.