Estimation of expectable network quality in wireless mesh networks

Our work aims to improve the usability of wireless mesh networks as communication layer of smart office environments. While wireless mesh networks are well-suited for this task in general, the negative impact of interference, fading, and saturation makes the communication basically opportunistic. Our goal is to develop a system which allows a short-term estimation of network quality in terms of throughput, packet loss and latency. The estimation is based on channel measurements and detected high-level activities. With the estimated quality, we expect a significant improvement to user assistance and a speed-up of device integration. In this work-in-progress paper, we define the fundamental problem and its background and design a system that is suitable to solve the problem. We also present some preliminary results from ongoing experiments we carry out in a custom indoor test bed.