**7. References**

	- Conti, M.; Das, S. K.; Lenzini, L. & Skalli H. (2007). Channel Assignment Strategies for Wireless Mesh Networks, In *Wireless Mesh Networks – Archi-tectures and Protocols*, Springer, ISBN 978-0-387-68839-8, New York

**Chapter 5** 

© 2012 Bokhari and Záruba, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Partially Overlapping Channel Assignments** 

The concept of wireless mesh networks (WMN) has emerged as a promising technology for the provision of affordable and low-cost solutions for a wide range of applications such as broadband wireless internet access in developing regions with no or limited wired infrastructure, security surveillance, and emergency networking, One concrete example is WMNs for public safety teams like firefighters who can still be connected with the help of mesh nodes mounted on street poles even if all infrastructure communications fail. The main reason for this vast acceptance of mesh networks in the industry and academia is because of their self-maintenance feature and the low cost of wireless routers. In addition, the self-forming features of WMNs make the deployment of a mesh network easy thereby enabling large-scale networks. Mesh networks which are of most commercial interests are characterized as fixed backbone WMNs where mesh nodes (routers or access points) are generally static and are mostly supplied by a permanent power source. Such a wireless mesh network architecture is illustrated in Figure 1, consisting of mesh routers, clients, and gateway nodes. Mesh routers (MR) communicate with peers in a multi hop fashion such that packets are mostly transmitted over multiple wireless links (hops). Therefore, nodes forward packets to other nodes that are on the route but may not be within direct transmission range of each other. Routers which are connected to the outside world are called gateway nodes (GWN). These GWNs carry traffic in and out of the mesh network. The collection of such routers and gateway nodes connected together in a multi hop fashion form the basis for an infrastructure WMN (also called backbone mesh). Moreover, the multi hop packet transmission in an infrastructure WMN extends the area of wireless broadband coverage without wiring the network; thus WMNs can be used as extensions to cellular networks, ad hoc networks (MANET), sensor and vehicular networks, IEEE 802.11 WLANs (Wi-Fi), and IEEE

**in Wireless Mesh Networks** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

802.16 based broadband wireless (WiMax) networks [1].

Fawaz Bokhari and Gergely Záruba

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/48476

**1. Introduction** 

