FROM ARCHITECTURE TO IMPLEMENTATION FOR
IEEE 802.11S WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS
Jianming Cheng
1
, Guixia Kang
1
, Yating Gao
1
, Yanyan Guo
2
, Hao Wu
3
1
Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communication, Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
2
School of Physics & Electronic Engineering of Shanxi University, Taiyuan Shanxi 030006, China
3
TGLD Information Center, Beijing 100876, China
chengjm@bupt.edu.cn, gxkang@bupt.edu.cn, YTGao@bupt.edu.cn,
guoyanyan@sxu.edu.cn haowu_tgld@163.com
Keywords: IEEE 802.11 s, Mesh Networks, Architecture,
Testbed, Two-Factor Authentication.
Abstract
In this paper, an optional architecture of wireless mesh
networks based on the IEEE 802.11 s draft is proposed
and implemented which aims at providing a low-cost,
secure and wide-range wireless WLAN-mesh network in
the real life. In order to validate the security and practi-
cality of the new architecture, a testbed is deployed which
consists of six mesh access points (MAPs) and one mesh
portal point (MPP). Every single node is designed on cor-
tex-A8 E210COREV2 core-board. Linux Operation Sys-
tem (OS) is chosen as the operation platform, in which
some software for mesh networking such as dynamic host
configuration protocol (DHCP) and network address
translation (NAT) are migrated after modifying and tailor-
ing the source codes. Test data traffic is analyzed to make
sure the security of two-factor authentication. Besides, test
results also demonstrate that the throughput of the dep-
loyed testbed approaches 4 Mbps and the accessing rate
can reach up to 10 Mbps in the central part. And above all,
the proposed WMN can provide a last-mile access and the
cost of each node is only $90.
1 Introduction
Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN), as one of the most
promising technology, is used to share broadband Internet
access and provide a low-cost, high-scalability solution
[1]. Following that mesh networking technology has been
redefined in IEEE 802.11 s amendment into the traditional
802.11 standard in 2012 [2], more and more researchers in
both industry and academia make special effort to study
combination of WMN and wired Internet to achieve better
performance.
Traditionally, a Wi-Fi AP is connected to the Internet
via a wired connection. In the IEEE 802.11 s WMNs, as
depicted in the Figure 1, the traditional AP is replaced by
multi-hop WMNs. Therefore, each Mesh AP can work as
a base station to cover a cell [3]. However, the 802.11s
WMN gets limited application because of the randomness
and high complexity in practice. In addition, due to be
short of optional schemes for real-life WMN, the high
deployment cost especially in choosing and designing a
set of hardware and software becomes another important
limitation.
This paper main gives the following contributions:
1) A novel architecture of WMN is put forward which
simplifies and optimizes the traditional 802.11 s WMN:
every mesh node can provide mobile hotspot services, and
two-factor authentication is added into the WMN for en-
hancing the access control and security of WMN system.
2) A seven-node (six Mesh APs and one Mesh Portal
Point) 802.11 s-based testbed is designed and imple-
mented in the real life. The entire design of hardware and
software has been implemented at a low cost ($90).
3) Sufficient tests are conducted for validation based on
the testbed. Test results demonstrate some good features,
like the multi-hop capability, the good coverage, the stable
access property and the high-level security. For example,
the Linux-based testbed maintains high accessing rate (10
Mbps in the central part) and high throughput (4 Mbps).
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.
Firstly, Section 2 briefly illustrates the previous work and
overviews some critical features of IEEE 802.11 s draft
related to the proposal. Section 3 presents the proposed
architecture of WMNs and the detailed implementation of
Figure 1. Existed architecture of IEEE 802.11 s mesh network.