Performance analysis of large scale RF-mesh networks for smart cities and IoT

Smart Cities, IoT and Smart Grid development needs solid and steady communication infrastructures to support the diversity and high number of applications. RF-mesh is one of the most popular wireless technology in those context since it allows to connect a large number of nodes in a mesh topology. To study the suitability of a network infrastructure for the applications requirement, network performance analysis is needed. This paper proposes a novel Markov-modulated model for the performance analysis of large scale RF-mesh networks for smart cities applications. The instances are build using Geographical Information System (GIS) data in order to maintain fitness to actually implemented RF-Mesh systems. The model is characterized by a high scalability (e.g., thousands of nodes) and a limited computational time (i.e., in the order of some minutes). The model also takes into account implementation details, such as retransmission probability, buffer size and a precise wireless interference analysis, which are not thoroughly considered in previous RF-Mesh performance literature.