MobiMESH network architecture features a layered structure as reported in the Figure. The Wireless Mesh Backbone, which is the core of the MobiMESH technology, provides a high capacity transport commodity to deliver the traffic generated/collected by the access network.The Wireless Mesh Backbone is integrated with cabled networks and with the Internet through the Wired Backbone featuring Gateway devices. Devices belonging to the Access Network provide traditional access services (like standard WiFi access points) to end-user clients. The access network is perceived by the end-user client as a traditional WiFi WLAN. 

The end-user clients can seamlessly roam around the network, thanks to the MobiMESH mobility support solutions, and can further communicate with other end-user clients and/or access the Internet or other cabled network integrated with MobiMESH network. 
MobiMESH technology is based on a “real” mesh paradigm. Indeed, it operates at layer 3, differently than other networking solutions operating at lower layers, or featuring point-to-point radio links.

Comparison with Layer 2 Mesh Solutions

Several solutions are available on the market operating at layer 2 both in the access and in the backbone network.  On one hand, these solutions are simpler in that they do not require to design and routing management. On the other hand, they come with drawbacks related to the inefficiency in the use of radio resources and   the limited flexibility in the network configuration procedures. Indeed, layer 2 networks do not feature a real routing mechanism, since the propagation of the information is performed within a common broadcast domain; solutions are available to create forwarding spanning trees to cope with cycles and protection paths, but such solutions are often to be configured manually and, moreover, the re-configuration latency may not be negligible. Finally, the creation of forwarding trees often neglects the quality of the underlying links.
On the other hand, the MobiMESH technology implements a real routing protocol on the wireless backbone; such protocol continuously updates the network topology and selects the best paths from sources to destinations. This allows to reduce the reaction latency in case of link break down or device failure, since the routes are re-configured on the fly.  Moreover, MobiMESH routing protocol leverages quality parameters from the lower layers (link rate, link quality, frequencies assigned to the interfaces) to optimize the route selection phase.  It is indeed well known that the simple shortest path routing policy (minimizing the number of radio hops to the destination) may be highly ineffective in wireless networks, since not all the wireless links (hops) have the same quality. As an example, some links may have a lower nominal data rate than others, or a lower quality, and may be preferable to route traffic along a 2-hops path featuring two 54 Mb/s links, rather than along a single hop path with a 11 Mb/s link. MobiMESH routing protocol accounts for such parameters   in the route selection phase.
 
Moreover, mobility management in layer-2 mesh networks leverages standard solutions from the IEEE 802.11 family, which is known to be scarcely effective to support real-time applications. The very same IEEE has recently released a new standard amendment, the IEEE 802.11r, to eliminate the drawbacks of the previous standards providing mobility support for real-time applications. The IEEE 802.11r provides handover latencies in the order of 50 ms, which is considered as negligible from the service’s perspective. Such standard has been recently released and commercial devices are not available yet to confirm such performances.
MobiMESH networks adopt a proprietary routing protocol to manage mobility providing handover delay within 10 ms and 50 ms (in the worst case of handover between remote areas, which is very unlikely to happen).  Such solution does not require any additional application/software (IEEE 802.11r, etc) on the user client, being the mobility management entirely operated by the network in a transparent way.  The mobility management is moreover integrated with the monitoring system thus allowing the tracking of the mobile users and the implementation of location-based services, based on the localization of the user itself.

Comparison with Dual Radio Solutions

Several mesh solutions leverage dual radio devices, that is devices featuring two distinct wireless interfaces.  Typically, one interface is tuned to the 2.4 GHz and dedicated to the access part of the network working as an access point, whereas the other interface is dedicated to the creation of the backbone transport network at 5GHz.  All the backbone interfaces are commonly tuned to the same frequency channel creating a mesh infrastructure.  This solution has the obvious drawback that being the backbone interfaces tuned to the same frequency, the transmissions interfere with all the close-by interfaces (within two-hops), thus lowering the overall efficiency.  Indeed, the multiple access mechanism CSMA/CA, typical of IEEE 802.11 technology, prevents every transmitter from accessing the channel if the channel is already “taken” from another transmission.  This causes the so-called intra-flow interference problem, which prevents a device to receive and retransmit a flow through two different interfaces tuned on the same frequency channel at the same time, which automatically halves the available bandwidth per-flow and per retransmission.
MobiMESH devices are geared with four fully configurable radio interfaces which can be used for the access network or for the backbone, at 2.4GHz or at 5 GHz. It is common use to use multiple interfaces tuned to different frequency channels on the backbone, which allows the MobiMESH routing protocol to overcome the intra-flow interference problem (one device can receive from one frequency channel and retransmit through another frequency channel at the same time), thus maximizing the efficiency in the bandwidth utilization

Comparison with Layer 2 Networks

Solutions are available on the market based on networks of layer 2 point-to-point links, coupled with access points to provide wireless coverage the end-users.
These solutions share the same drawbacks as the layer-2 wireless mesh networks discussed above, and, moreover, feature additional weak points related to the scarce flexibility in the network management and configuration. Indeed, solutions based on static point-to-point links often lack of dynamic algorithm for the network management and device provisioning; moreover, the routing is obviously static, and protection paths must be pre-configured and engineering “ad hoc” by skilled operators. On the other hand, layer 3 mesh networks, like MobiMESH, make all these operations related to network management and configuration dynamic and self-executing.  Moreover, solutions based on point-to-point radio links do not usually integrate centralized tools to manage the user’s access and the security enforcement.  Finally, in case the point-to-point radio links operate at higher frequencies than WiFi’s ones, it is often needed a further investment to purchase the utilization of the specific bandwidth.
The MobiMESH solution, besides the advantages related to the innovative routing protocol, offers a set of tools to manage, and monitor the network. The MobiMESH network device downloads the operating configuration from a central provisioning server, and they are further geared with a watchdog mechanism which maintains basic connectivity with devices even in case of configuration errors. It is always possible to operate a MobiMESH device remotely without the need of physically sending maintenance personnel to check the device.

The table hereafter showcases the main features of the different available solutions to provide outdoor wireless coverage. As clear from the table, the competitiveness of MobiMESH solution comes from three main strength points: