A wireless transmitter can use a channel to transmit bits over distance per second (in general, either more bits over shorter distance or fewer bits over longer distance). We call this the Channel Transport Capacity. This paper analyzes how the one-hop channel transport capacity limits multi-hop network capacity in cellular wireless mesh networks. The main results of this paper are analytic expressions for capacity bounds for multi-radio, multi-channel, multi-rate, multi-hop and carrier sense based cells in cellular wireless mesh networks. We validated our analytic results with simulations.

We present the results of an analysis of the usage of our new campus-wide wireless network. A week-long traffic trace was collected in January 2003, recording address and protocol information for every packet sent and received on the wireless network. A centralised authentication log was used to match packets with wireless access points. The trace was analysed to answer questions about where, when, how much, and for what our wireless network is being used. Such information is important in evaluating design principles and planning for future network expansion.