A survey of rural Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) deployments

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) has remained an alternative to providing telecommunication services in many rural parts of industrialized and developing countries. However, the suitability of existing rural mesh technologies in industrialized countries and how it fits emerging remote areas in developing countries is in doubt. While the architectures are similar; subtle technical differences impact mesh performances of rural deployments in developing countries. In this paper, the research focus describes generic rural settings via the taxonomy of the domains' characteristic. The authors present a survey of a few IEEE 802.11-based rural WMNs deployments in real-life scenarios over a decade between 2003 and 2013. In particular, the study offers an evaluation and critical analysis of a few design components of these deployments. Finally, it identifies a plethora of common patterns, technical variations, challenges and unique features as well as some future directions to improve the reliability and resilience of WMN deployments in rural Africa.