ScaleMesh: A Scalable Dual-Radio Wireless Mesh Testbed

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce and evaluate ScaleMesh, a scalable miniaturized dual-radio wireless mesh testbed based on IEEE 802.11b/g technology- ScaleMesh can emulate large-scale mesh networks within a miniaturized experimentation area by adaptively shrinking the transmission range of mesh nodes by means of variable signal attenuators. To this end, we derive a theoretical formula for approximating the attenuation level required for downscaling desired network topologies. We present a performance study in which we validate the feasibility of ScaleMesh for network emulation and protocol evaluation. We further conduct single- radio vs. dual-radio experiments in ScaleMesh, and show that dual-radio communication significantly improves network goodput. The median TCP goodput we observe in a typical random topology at 54 Mbit/s and dual-radio communication ranges between 1468 Kbit/s and 7448 Kbit/s, depending on the current network load.