Characterizing deployment and distribution of self-powered mesh routers in wireless mesh networks

Widely deployed mesh routers (MRs) interconnect to each other and form a multi-hop backbone of a wireless mesh network (WMN), which provides a ubiquitous high-speed network access service for mesh clients (MCs) with a multi-cell architecture. Besides using air-interfaces, a more flexible and low cost MR deployment assumes lack of power cable at the locations of MRs, which enables MRs to be deployed anywhere needed. In deploying such a WMN, the power issue of MRs can be addressed by carry-on batteries that could be recharged by solar panels. The deployment of MRs, on the other hand, should ensure the connectivity of multi-hop backbone network, and an overlapped multi-cell coverage is also necessary to provide seamless connections for MCs. This paper provides analytical models to simultaneously consider connectivity, coverage and energy constraints in MR deployment and derives the necessary MR distribution function. Following the obtained results, we also propose a non-uniform WMN deployment scheme that substantially enhances the network throughput. Simulation results validate the effectiveness and advantages of our deployment strategy.