Capacity planning for tactical wireless mesh networks

Predicting the capacity of wireless mesh networks is difficult, due to the complex interaction of various layers such as the radio environment, media access protocols, network protocols and, traffic load and types. When modelling and simulation takes into account the interaction of all these factors, it can facilitate insights into anticipated network behaviour. These insights can be used to more effectively plan the deployment of the wireless network. In this paper we present a modelling and simulation approach which captures these aspects, and present results which demonstrate the types of insights this approach can provide, the most important being traffic capacity. When traffic capacity can be anticipated, various planning and operational decisions can be made with much more certainty.