Aims and scope
Wireless mesh networks are emerging as a key technology for next generation wireless networking. A wireless mesh network is characterized by dynamic self-organization, self-configuration and self-healing, which allow it for easy and fast, highly scalable, reliable and cost-effective network deployment under very diverse environments, and provision of better coverage and capacity to stationary and mobile users. Because of this, wireless mesh networks have not only become a hot topic in the research community, but are also experiencing a very fast deployment in many today’s environments, such as public city-wide broadband WiFi networks, rural networks, private neighbourhood communities, or private business networks that are characterized by frequent topology changes, cabling troubles, or hard environmental conditions.
Triggered by these fast advances in both research and industry communities, several standardization bodies have started working on specifying recognized protocols and architectures for interoperable WMNs, including both the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN standards committee (inside the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX, the IEEE 802.11s, the IEEE 802. and the IEEE 802.15.5 Working Groups) and the IETF in the context of wireless access and mobility support in Next Generation Internet (inside, e.g., the MIPSHOP, NETLMM and MANET Working Groups). However, it is still to be fully understood what technological challenges these standardization efforts have to face, how they will evolve, and what application scenarios will be able to drive their possible success.
Building on the success of the last year event, MeshTech 2008 aims at bringing together again practitioners and researchers from both academia and industry in order to discuss the recent advances and future evolution of next generation mobile mesh/multi-hop relay networking technologies and standards. |
