Medium Access Control in Wireless Mesh Networks

In wireless mesh networks, ad hoc and infrastructure modes are both used to support multihop data transmission from mesh clients. Because of the hybrid network architecture, existing problems and challenges in centralized or distributed networks become even worse and severely damage the network performance. In this chapter, we first analyze the network architecture and identify some technical challenges on the design of medium access control protocols in wireless mesh networks. The corresponding solutions are reviewed, followed by a brief discussion of some open issues.