WING - Wireless Mesh Network for Next-Generation Internet

WING started as a 3 years research project on Wireless Mesh Networks, sponsored by the Italian Ministry of University and Research and led by CREATE-NET and Technion. The project aimed at fostering the scientific cooperation between CREATE-NET and the Technion through the creation of a top-level international research team in the area of algorithms and protocols for wireless networking, able to stay at the forefront of technological and scientific research through the integration of the different competences owned by the two proposing institutions.

Part of the developed software is built on top of Roofnet, an experimental 802.11b/g mesh network developed by the MIT CSAIL. WING extends the original project by adding support for multiple radio interfaces, WCETT routing metric, and autonomic channel assignment. All the developed software modules have been released under a BSD License and are made fully available to the research community.

• System design and features. A detailed description of the system architecture and components.
• Wing for embedded devices: How to build and run WING on an embedded platform using OpenWRT.
• Wing for x86 desktop machines: How to build and run Wing on a generic x86 machine (e.g. your laptop). You will need a set a PCs each of them equipped with a WiFi card based on the Atheros chipset (you can find a list of supported devices here).
• Screenshots. The Wing web-based management dashboard (Cinder)
• Click modular router. Packages for the click modular router.
• OpenWRT. Packages for OpenWRT (kamikaze branch).
• Downloads. Software released by the Wing project.
• Links on wireless mesh networking. Misc links on wireless mesh networking.

• Multi-radio support. Multiple radio interfaces support delivers improved spatial reuse and enhanced system throughput. An interference and traffic aware channel assignment algorithm is used in order to dynamically assign the operating frequencies.
• MIMO. The recently standardized IEEE 802.11n technology is used in order to improve throughput and coverage in outdoor scenarios.
• Auto-configuration. No need of configuration, mesh boxes works out of the box. WING nodes automatically detect whether they are relays or gateways. The node auto-configures itself as gateway if an IP address can be obtained using DHCP over one of its interfaces.
• Three-tiers architecture. Internet connectivity is provided by the Mesh Gateways using either wired or wireless links. This is useful in three-tiers architectures where the gateways are connected to a bandwidth aggregation point using point-to-multipoint wireless links, Currently supported technologies are: WiFi, WiMax, and UMTS.
• QoS Support. WING implements several QoS enhancements aimed at improving the voice capacity of the system and at providing performance isolation among competing flows in noisy environments. Traffic differentiation is provided by means of a multi-queue system based on the DiffServ framework.
• Flexible plug-in based architecture. The WING platform can be easily extended in order to support custom application scenarios. At the moment the following functionalities have been implemented as plugins:
  • GPS. Each mesh router supports geo-location using an external USB/Serial GPS module. Basic Google Maps support is provided.
  • Webcam. Basic indoor video surveillance deployments can be easily implemented by equipping one or more mesh routers with an USB based webcam. The video stream can then be accessed from anywhere in the network using a web browser.
  • NTP. System time can be kept in sync with an external NTP Server. Mesh router can also be configured to act as NTP server in order to distributed a common reference time thorough the entire network. If a GPS module is available, then the GPS is used as reference time.

• Increased coverage in outdoor WiMAX networks. An hybrid WiMAX/Wi-Fi mesh architecture can decrease the number of WiMAX base stations needed to obtain good coverage.
• Reduced dead zones in Enterprise Indoor Wi-Fi networks. A hybrid WiMAX/WiFi mesh architecture can provide ubiquitous indoor coverage for office/business environments.
• Embedded CPE. WING imposes no additional hardware/software requirements on the client-side, making it possible to leverage the entire WiFi installed base. In dual-interface setups, the second wireless interface can be configured to serve a standard WiFi Access Point providing end-user with Internet connectivity.
• Fast provisioning. The self-configuring mesh backhaul allows for drop-in network coverage only when/where needed. In case of a fully outdoor deployment, no additional equipment needs to be installed on the end-user side. WING is an excellent plug-in solution in existing and less reliable WiFi deployments.
• Embedded VoIP service. WING supports out of the box VoIP functionalities that can be exploited by the end-users using any VoIP client (mobile handsets with WiFi capabilities are also supported, e.g., Nokia E-Series, RIM Blackberry, and Apples iPhone).

• Adaptive traffic aggregation: A packet concatenation scheme capable of boosting the voice capacity of the network.
• Opportunistic scheduling: An opportunistic scheduler addressing the IEEE 802.11 performance anomaly.
• QoS Provisioning: A integrated DiffServ framework providing soft QoS bounds.
• Multi-radio: An interference and traffic aware channel assignment scheme.
• Publications: Papers describing the achieved results.

• wing, for both users and developers.

• Roberto Riggio
• Tinku Rasheed