title: Analysis of Infrastructure Mesh Networking 
for Broadband Wireless Access Networks

author: Amit Kumar Saha, Byoung-Jo ``J'' Kim, N. K. Shankaranarayanan, 
David B. Johnson}


Abstract

The economic case for any large-scale wireless access network
deployment, especially those that aim to provide broadband experience, are
heavily influenced by costs related to BS (Base Station) site acquisition and
operations, such as installations, backhaul costs, tower lease payments, etc.
These costs could be relatively insensitive to the cost reduction of electronic
components of a network.

``Infrastructure'' mesh architecture presents a promising way to alleviate 
such issues. Infrastructure mesh is a type of mesh networking in which, unlike 
in ``ad hoc'' or ``client'' meshes, subscriber stations (SS) generally do not 
participate in traffic forwarding. Instead, SS's utilize strategically placed 
mesh base stations (mBS), managed by network operators, to wirelessly forward 
the traffic to and from SS's.

Similar concepts have been studied before, especially using distributed medium
access control (MAC), such as Wi-Fi/802.11, or dedicated spectrum or channels 
for forwarding links. However, this paper proposes a novel and practical
infrastructure mesh suitable for wide-area cellular wireless access networks 
which typically use centralized MAC in licensed and limited spectrum such as
WiMAX/802.16, HSPA, and CDMA2000 EV-DO.

The paper examines the capacity and coverage of the proposed infrastructure
mesh compared to conventional cellular networks under multicell frequency reuse
patterns and realistic wireless channel models. The proposed architecture
enables spatial radio resource reuse within a single sector and the analysis
accounts for multicell co-channel interference and radio resource consumption by
multihop forwarding links. Simulation results show that the proposed
architecture increases network coverage and throughput substantially with 
minimal addition of network complexity. Additionally, the results illuminate 
various necessary design considerations in such systems.