Design and development of wireless mesh test-bed for large area monitoring

The increasing use of wireless technologies for the implementation of mesh networks has led to the emergence of various types of applications. The reduction in cost, ease in deployment and flexibility are the main factors that make wireless mesh network increasingly popular. The ease of setup, mobility and extended reach are the added advantages of this topology. This paper gives a detailed explanation on the design and development of a wireless mesh network for large area monitoring. In our experiment, we were able to stream video through multiple hops to cover an area of approximately 1 square km. However, it was found that the quality of video decreases with increase in the number of hops because of the interference and decrease in the signal strength. The throughput and the latency also gradually decreases with increase in the number of hops. However, the latency achieved at the fourth hop is far better than the normal latency in an internet broadband network.