Wireless Self-Organizing Backbone Mesh Network (WiSoNet)

Despite significant advances in parts of the physical layer, available WLAN systems still cannot offer wired equivalent bandwidth. In this paper we propose a novel concept, called wireless self-organizing backbone mesh network (WiSoNet), for a wireless network infrastructure as a backbone and describe its long-term potential. WiSoNet combines two major IEEE standards - IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) to build a heterogeneous wireless network topology. To aggregate bandwidth of multiple WLAN connections we introduce a hybrid network solution that uses ad-hoc mechanisms. Further, to decrease the amount of administration and resource management, we use specific algorithms for the self-organization of routing and channels assignment. Since the WiMAX-based supply network already supports quality of service, we propose mechanisms to extend the QoS to end users. Accordingly, we present our prototypical system implementation and discuss the issues we will focus on in the future