ScaleMesh: A Scalable Dual-Radio Wireless Mesh Testbed

Abstract

Abstract-In this paper, we introduce and evaluate ScaleMesh, a scalable miniaturized dual-radio wireless mesh testbed based on IEEE 802.11b/g technology. ScaleMesh can emulate large-scale mesh networks within a miniaturized experimentation area by adaptively shrinking the transmission range of mesh nodes by means of variable signal attenuators. To this end, we derive a theoretical formula for approximating the attenuation level required for downscaling desired network topologies. We present a performance study in which we validate the feasibility of ScaleMesh for network emulation and protocol evaluation. We further conduct singleradio vs. dual-radio experiments in ScaleMesh, and show that dual-radio communication significantly improves network goodput. The median TCP goodput we observe in a typical random topology at 54 Mbit/s and dual-radio communication ranges between 1468 Kbit/s and 7448 Kbit/s, depending on the current network load.

Multi-Radio Wireless Sensor Networks: Energy Efficient Solutions for Radio Activation

“…Multiple radios have also been used to find suitable end to end paths satisfying certain quality guarantees [3]. There also have been works that clearly document the performance benefits of multi-radio wireless networks in real-life settings [10]- [12]. The above works assume that the network remains connected even when all the sensor nodes activate only their lowest power radio.…”