Planning a Wireless Mesh Network Which Takes Advantage of the Urban Geography of the City

Abstract

The Metropolitan Area of Caracas, Venezuela, has a geographical distribution such that almost every middle-class and wealthy neighborhood is located next to at least one barrio -- informal squatter settlements. We propose a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) that exploits the urban geography of the city, so some poor families could gain access to the Internet via one or more Internet Service Providers contracted by some neighbors living in surrounding middle-class or wealthy neighborhoods. We present the design of the intended WMN, according to some deployment strategy issues: provisioning, node locations, interference, node associations, connectivity, coverage and types of antennas. Then we describe the results of the simulation study in terms of throughput and packet loss rate for three routing protocols: Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol (HWMP) (reactive and proactive). In order to implement the WMN, some kind of agreement must be established between the person who pays for the Internet connection service in the neighborhood and the members of the community in the barrio. Also, given the policies of the government in matter of laptop provisioning for the low-income families, we expect to have enough mesh nodes in the barrios so connectivity along the mesh network could be guaranteed.