Handling Addressing and Mobility in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks

To participate in communication, a network node requires an address. In wired computer networks a node receives its address according to the hierarchical context. In contrast to wired networks, Wireless Mesh Networks have flat topology, since nodes are free to move and create highly changeable context. Besides, Wireless Mesh Networks should support mobility of nodes. By merging of hierarchical wired networks and flat wireless networks in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks, an address allocation scheme should meet the demands of both wired and wireless domains, and moreover, mobility support should be introduced. In this report we define the problem of address allocation and mobility support in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks. We review and evaluate the solutions presented in the literature and also analyze the problem of mobility detection more closely.