Principles of IEEE 802.11s

Abstract

In 2003, interests in the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (IEEE) 802.11 Working Group (WG) led to the formation of Task Group (TG) "S". 802.11s develops a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) amendment. Unlike existing Mesh products, 802.11s forms a transparent 802 broadcast domain that supports any higher layer protocols. Therefore, 802.11s provides frame forwarding and path selection at layer-2. 802.11i describes a security concept for stations that associate with an Access Point (AP). However, in a Mesh Basic Service Set (BSS) devices need to mutually authenticate to provide integrity of the network. Thus, 802.11s adds additional elements to the concepts of 802.11L While traditional Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are AP centred an 802.11 Mesh is fully distributed. Hence, 802.11s considers extensions to the Medium Access Control (MAC) too. The authors have contributed to the standardization of 802.11s since 2003. As constant participants we give insight to draft 1.02 of TG "s" and provide an outlook to future evolution of 802.11's first Mesh standard.