How mesh networking ensures uninterrupted data exchange between connected devices
The full article was originally published by DXC. Read the full article here.
One of the major challenges with connected devices is having a reliable network. Cell phone and standard Wi-Fi networks do not guarantee communication everywhere. Even dense urban areas have numerous “dead” cellular zones in building basements, elevators, tunnels and underpasses. Remote areas like crop fields, mines, oceans and space also pose problems.
With this in mind, we designed our secure framework for cyber-physical systems to support wireless mesh networking (WMN). The framework is built on distributed ledger technology (DLT). DLT is very important for cyber-physical systems connecting to the internet — also known as internet of things (IoT) — for trusted, tamper-proof messaging and to ensure that data is not lost in transit. If cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity is lost due to an outage or dead zone, the WMN steps in so devices can still transmit their data (up to a pre-defined radius) to the DLT. This ensures critical connectivity, especially important for factory automation, healthcare applications and worker safety in remote locations like mines.
Our framework diagram below shows this offline messaging with a black cloud icon. Let’s see how it works.
Mesh network deep dive
As shown in the figure below, the end point (“E”) collects data from associated sensors and machines and passes it to the nearest router (“R”). Routers send, receive and pass messages to the coordinator (“C”). All the communication happens through radio signals — i.e., without a cellular network or Wi-Fi. Once the coordinator receives the data, it pushes the data into the DLT in our secure framework.
