"True-Mesh" Technology
What is Mesh?
Today many wireless equipment providers are using the term “Mesh” to describe their products capabilities. When in definition most of these products are merely Point-to-Multi-Point (P2MP) wireless equipment.
P2MP often described as wireless mesh networks often consist of mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways. The mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones and other wireless devices while the mesh routers forward traffic to and from the gateways which connect to the Internet.
The coverage area of the radio nodes working as a single network is sometimes called a mesh cloud. Access to this mesh cloud is dependent on the radio nodes working in harmony with each other to create a radio network. This is achieved by pre-designing the network and using channel management. Once a network has been established any additions to the infrastructure with mesh routers or gateways often require reconfiguration so that interference does not weaken the network.
A mesh network is reliable on a small scale and offers limited redundancy. When one mesh router can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate mesh routers. However if a mesh gateway no longer operates the entire network shuts down. This is because in most P2MP networks the gateway is the controller of the network maintaining the routing tables, DHCP server and network critical information.
What is "True-Mesh"
Because the Antenna Products “True-Mesh” wireless radio was originally a military design it was based on the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) design. “True-Mesh” is a type of wireless ad hoc network, and is a self-configuring network of mobile devices connected by any number of wireless links. Every device that has been enabled with the IRS and in a “True-Mesh” network is also a router because it is required to forward traffic unrelated to its own use. Each “True-Mesh” device is free to move independently, in any arbitrary direction, and thus each device will potentially change its links to other devices on a regular basis.
The “True-Mesh” wireless network offers the most advantages over virtually every other mesh wireless equipment available today. The Antenna Products “True-Mesh” wireless solution has solved some of the largest obstacles to other wireless networks, maintaining real-time traffic in a highly mobile network, maintaining low latency, low degradation across hundreds of “True-Mesh” radios supporting control data for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), cameras and IP traffic.