[Battlemesh] Meshing with strong/near clients and weak/far nodes

Mitar mitar at tnode.com
Tue Feb 18 16:40:34 UTC 2014


Hi!

I think using TDMA would help here. Each client would reserve its time
slot and it would not matter how strong they transmit in their time slot.

Sadly open source drivers do not (yet) support TDMA. But Ubiquiti ones do.


Mitar

> I'm curious if list members have found clever approaches for operating mesh
> nodes that must talk simultaneously to near/strong clients and far/weak
> clients.  I've found that, at least with atheros / ath5k-based nodes
> running OpenWRT AA r39154, which do single-radio meshing via multiple VIFs,
> connecting a particular strong client to the AP VIF of one node can disrupt
> that node's communication with a distant node on the adhoc VIF.  Admitted,
> the ath5k driver is pretty suboptimal, but its weakness does at least
> demonstrate the nature of the problem easily.
> 
> This problem is less pronounced with ar71xx-based nodes, e.g. UBNT Airmax
> gear, and I do understand it is going to fundamental to single-radio
> meshing applications anyway (i.e. hidden node problem).  Likewise, one
> can't always control clients' TX strength, besides mounting nodes at
> locations such that a client can never be physically too close, e.g. on a
> rooftop or high on an exterior wall.
> 
> Acknowledging the limits of the radios, I'm curious if anyone has had
> reasonable success in these situations with things the following:
> 
> - RF-Armor style shielding on the back of the mesh node, i.e. to reduce the
> influence of stray noise or reflections
> - Setting an RTS value
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Battlemesh mailing list
> Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
> 

-- 
http://mitar.tnode.com/
https://twitter.com/mitar_m


More information about the Battlemesh mailing list