The present embodiments relate to wireless network communication systems and, more particularly, to a simplified mesh network protocol that is backwards compatible with existing IEEE 802.11 standards.
A wireless network is a type of wireless communication system where at least one wireless transceiver must not only receive and process its own data, but it must also serve as a relay for other wireless transceivers in the network. The network may be a simple mesh network, a network range extender, or other comparable network system. This may be accomplished by a wireless routing protocol where a data frame is propagated within the network by hopping from transceiver to transceiver to transmit the data frame from a source node to a destination node. A wireless node may be a wireless access point (AP) such as a wireless router, a mobile phone, or a computer capable of accessing the wireless local area network (WLAN). In other applications, such as Internet of Things (IoT) applications, the wireless node may be an external security monitor, a room monitor, a fire or smoke detector, a weather station, or any number of other WLAN applications for home or business environments.
A practical mesh network must maintain continuous network paths for all wireless nodes. This requires reliable network formation, reconfiguration around broken or interrupted network paths, and prioritized routing to ensure that data frames travel from source to destination along short yet reliable network paths.
FIG. 1 shows an exemplary medium access control (MAC) header of the prior art that may be appended to IEEE 802.11 data frames for wireless network communication. The first three fields (Frame Control, Duration/ID, and Address 1) and the frame check sequence (FCS) field are present in all frames. The remaining fields are present only in certain frame types and subtypes of frames. The four address fields are used to indicate a basic service set identifier (BSSID), source address (SA), destination address (DA), transmitting station (STA) address (TA), and receiving STA address (RA).
Medium to large scale 802.11 compatible mesh networks use at least these four addresses to transmit standard, control, and management frames within the mesh. They are adapted to provide high capacity and bandwidth at the expense of power and protocol complexity. Many IoT nodes, however, communicate by relatively small frames without a need for high speed or bandwidth. They may have limited memory and computing power. Moreover, they may be battery operated so that power consumption is a significant concern.
Although network proposals of the prior art provide steady improvements in wireless network communications, the present inventors recognize that still further improvements in IoT mesh network protocol are possible. Accordingly, preferred embodiments described below are directed toward this and other improvements over the prior art.