Performance Tracking and Risk Assessment of Wireless Mesh Networks: A WiP Framework

Abstract

Wireless mesh networks have, in recent years, gained a strong foothold in the industry with a steady growing number of installations. Although wireless solutions are now “proven in use”, some of the challenges e.g. QoS which arise from this accelerated adoption have not fully been addressed. In this paper, a framework for tracking QoS and assessing the risk to performance of wireless mesh networks is proposed. This paper presents and consolidates a list of performance indicators which are relevant to industrial applications. Based on those indicators, a method to visualize them in a single graph with a unified scale is introduced. This QoS based application profiling approach keeps track of overall network performance and relevant trade-offs. Moreover, this paper proposes a method to assess the risk to network performance and eventually to QoS by using historical statistical data.