OLSR Mesh Networks for Broadband Access: Enhancements, Implementation and Deployment

In the context of an EU FP6 project, ADHOCSYS, we have developed a reliable and cost-effective solution for broadband Internet access in rural and mountainous areas. This solution is built based on multi-hop wireless mesh networking technologies and covers many aspects such as routing, reliability, QoS, security, self-configuration, self-healing, remote network monitoring, power management etc. In this paper, we present solely the routing aspect of the developed mesh network, focusing on new routing features that have been designed, implemented, and deployed in a real-life operational network. These new features are developed based on an extended version of the OLSR protocol. The test results are also presented in the paper.