Introduction

Abstract

The recently emerged paradigm of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) is finding applicability in last few miles and last hop connectivity, and the study of WMNs is useful in understanding multihop wireless networks for more specific application domains as well as mesh networks themselves. We briefly introduce the mesh paradigm, and remark on the very generality of the paradigm as its strength. Survivability, fault tolerance, and service continuity are design problems that have come to the fore in the WMN research area recently, and are being addressed by joint design techniques that research in the last decade brought forth. Joint design, in turn, was recognized to be an important area by the use of practical testbeds and early real-world deployments made possible by the flexibility of WMNs that allowed cheap realizations. In this introductory chapter, after introducing the mesh paradigm, we survey some notable testbeds, followed by an overview of the rest of the chapters.