| In the near future, wireless access to the Internet is expected to become a necessity. Since the demand for wireless Internet access has been increasing dramatically, public hot spots and other wireless broadband services have become increasingly popular. To satisfy the high demand from future wireless Internet users, new standards were developed and a large amount of spectrum in high frequency hand was allocated for future wireless access technologies. However, due to the higher frequency, signal attenuates more severely than that of lower frequency systems. Consequently, as future wireless communications systems migrate to higher frequencies for more spectrums, relay infrastructure will play a crucial role. Our research investigates the effects of relay infrastructure in two different wireless networks; wireless local area networks (WLANs) and heterogeneous wireless mesh networks. Different analytical models were (leveloped to analyze the effects of relay equipment placement with respect to system performance and cost. Moreover, efficient optimization techniques were developed to adjust network design parameters and in turn obtaining the, desired network quality. The main focus of this thesis is to show that relay equipment placement is an important network design parameter which can suhstantially affect network performance and cost. |
