Overlays on Wireless Mesh Networks: Implementation and Cross-Layer Searching

After years of research on ad hoc networks, practical wireless mesh networks are moving towards mainstream industry deployment. As wireless mesh networks become more ubiquitous, how to enable distributed applications and services is a challenging research topic. A new network architecture called OverMesh is recently proposed, in which computational overlays provide the facility to deploy distributed services across mobile mesh nodes. In this paper, we present the first implementation of the OverMesh architecture. The overlays are built over an IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh network pre-standard prototype. The platform enables development and deployment of concurrent distributed experiments on wireless mesh networks. Based on this platform, we further introduce a cross-layer searching algorithm, which combines traditional overlay searching with ad hoc network routing so that a physically short searching route is facilitated. Both experimentation and simulation results are presented.