Investigation of Relaying Node Placement in Wireless Mesh Networks

The aim of this paper is to use analytical means to discover the effective functional range of a node in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) and to determine the optimized position of the relaying node when placed between two mesh routers in WMNs. A simple source to destination model with two transmission distance schemes and simple relaying node model with three relaying node position schemes were designed for analyzing the network capacity. The main results are achieved by analyzing the capacity of network model and simulation programs are also developed in OPNET Modeler. The main contribution of the paper is analytically to show the relaying node can operate to forward packets to receiver when the relaying node is deployed within the range of both transmitter and receiver when the receiver is deployed out of the range of the transmitter. It also shows that in the relaying node functional area, the maximum capacity could be achieved when the relaying node is deployed in the middle between the transmitter and the receiver.