Heterogeneous meshed wireless back-haul network integrating unidirectional technologies

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have matured in recent years and the visibility of WMN deployments has attracted commercial operators to investigate this technology for applicability in their networks. Having their roots in the Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) world and rather cheap off-the-shelf single-radio WLAN routers, WMN routing protocols were not designed for applicability in carriergrade back-haul networks. For example, protocols such as OLSR or B.A.T.M.A.N. can not address the QoS-requirements of a modern operator back-haul network with its increasing demand for triple-play content. Although numerous solutions have been proposed to introduce QoS-awareness at the protocol or the technology level, traditional WMNs fail to meet commercial operator requirements in terms of reliability, traffic engineering and QoS guarantees. This chapter proposes a novel approach combining an IEEE 802.21-based control plane and an MPLS-based data plane. To provide support for ubiquitous high-bandwidth multi-media services, it seamlessly integrates unidirectional broadcast technologies such as DVB into the heterogeneous multi-radio WiBACK architecture.