Cellular and Wi-Fi, the two main types of mobile communication, both use a server-client form of communication in which terminals connect to a base station and communicate with each other. In contrast, there is a form of communication in which terminals connect directly to each other. This is known as peer-to-peer communication. The form of communication known as wireless mesh is a type of peer-to-peer communication in which terminals relay messages to each other in a bucket relay fashion so that terminals in remote locations can communicate with each other without having to go through a base station.

　PicoCELA is a company with its own wireless mesh technology and develops and sells Wi-Fi access points that use this technology for backhaul. Backhaul refers to the relay links that connect base stations to the Internet. The coverage area of each base station is getting smaller every year, requiring LAN cabling for more base stations, i.e. more backhaul. In anticipation of the proliferation of such small cells, the focus has turned to wireless mesh to reduce the need for cumbersome wired LAN cabling for backhaul, and Wi-Fi access points equipped with PicoCELA wireless mesh technology are being deployed at more than 1000 sites, mainly in Japan.

Developed as a backhaul for small cells, PicoCELA's wireless mesh technology solves the challenges specific to small cell deployments and provides extremely stable wireless mesh communications that can successfully withstand use in harsh enterprise environments. This high stability of wireless mesh technology can be applied in many other areas. This presentation describes PicoCELA's wireless mesh technology, followed by some use cases and finally future application developments.