Fast Recovery from Link Failures and Blackout of a Managed Wireless Mesh for NerveNet

Abstract

A managed wireless mesh for infrastructure-level, stable regional mesh network has been studied. NerveNet, which we have been proposing, is a concept of future regional platform network that covers local regions and provides various context-aware services with the shared use of sensors and actuators. The managed wireless mesh developed for materializing NerveNet features auto-configuration of multiple, different routes between any two base stations for high capacity and reliability. The managed wireless mesh of ten base stations was implemented on PCs and commercial L2 switches. Performance evaluation showed that route switching after one or two link failures had been detected was completed in no later than 70 milliseconds while it takes a few to tens of seconds with existing adhoc routing-based mesh networks. It was also shown that the restart of the network took only about three minutes, enabling urgent recovery of communication in emergency situations.