A Novel Architecture for Future Wireless Mesh Networks

Connectivity and efficiency are two major issues in the design of future wireless mesh networks. In this paper, we will propose a novel network architecture that can address the two major issues in a cost-effective manner. In particular, our architecture is based on an overlay hypernetwork, which consists of multiple hyperchannels, each of which can provide connectivity for multiple nodes in the hyperchannel. By comparison, a typical tunnel in existing overlay network schemes can only provide connectivity for two end nodes. Based on this architecture, we further develop advanced network coding schemes that can significantly improve the performance of the network in terms of throughput and delay.