future internet Review Wireless Mesh Networking: An IoT-Oriented Perspective Survey on Relevant Technologies Antonio Cilfone * , Luca Davoli , Laura Belli and Gianluigi Ferrari Internet of Things (IoT) Lab, Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 181/A, 43124 Parma, Italy;
[email protected] (L.D.);
[email protected] (L.B.);
[email protected] (G.F.) * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +39-0521-905741 Received: 7 February 2019; Accepted: 10 April 2019; Published: 17 April 2019 Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT), being a “network of networks”, promises to allow billions of humans and machines to interact with each other. Owing to this rapid growth, the deployment of IoT-oriented networks based on mesh topologies is very attractive, thanks to their scalability and reliability (in the presence of failures). In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the following relevant wireless technologies: IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.4-oriented, and Sub-GHz-based LoRa. Our goal is to highlight how various communication technologies may be suitable for mesh networking, either providing a native support or being adapted subsequently. Hence, we discuss how these wireless technologies, being either standard or proprietary, can adapt to IoT scenarios (e.g., smart cities and smart agriculture) in which the heterogeneity of the involved devices is a key feature. Finally, we provide reference use cases involving all the analyzed mesh-oriented technologies. Keywords: mesh networks; routing algorithms; IEEE 802.11; bluetooth; IEEE 802.15.4; ZigBee; LoRa; smart agriculture; smart city; Internet of Things 1.