A testbed for wireless mesh networks

无线网状网络（WMNs）由于其易于部署和经济，代表了无线技术的下一波浪潮。尽管如此，作为一项新生技术，WMNs仍然缺乏许多旧有线/无线技术可用的开发工具，并且需要充分利用其潜力。在这一领域进行研究的一个重要工具是软件模拟器或实验测试平台。然而，由于缺乏对这些网络特有特性（例如，动态容量、干扰和公平性）的理解，不存在可靠的WMNs模拟器。这一事实使得实验测试平台成为开发和评估新研究理念的唯一可能途径，然后才能将其应用于商业产品。

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) represent the next wave in wireless technologies due to their ease of deployment and economy. Nonetheless, being a nascent technology, WMNs still lack many of the development tools, available to older wired/wireless technologies, and needed to exploit their full potential. An essential tool to pursue research in this area is a software simulator or an experimental testbed. However, a reliable simulator for WMNs does not exist due to a lack in understanding the characteristics peculiar to these networks (e.g., dynamic capacity, interference and fairness). This fact makes an experimental testbed the only possible avenue for developing and evaluating new research ideas before they can be applied to commercial products.