International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 3 Issue 2, Mar- Apr 2016 ISSN: 2394-2231 http://www.ijctjournal.org Page 153 Comparative Analysis of Gateway Placement Approaches for Wireless Mesh Network Swati Govil 1 , Dr.Paramjeet Rawat 2 1,2 (Department of Computer Science, IIMT Engineering College, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University) ----------------------------------------************************---------------------------------- Abstract: Wireless mesh networks offer high bandwidth Internet access for mobile users anywhere and at any time. It is an emerging technology that uses wireless multi-hop networking to provide a cost-efficient way for community or enterprise users to have broadband Internet access and share network resource. In this paper, we have tried to give a comparative analysis of various Gateway Placement approaches which can be helpful in understanding which approach will be useful in which situation. Keywords — Mesh networks, Gateway Placement, Clustering, Optimization, Throughput. ----------------------------------------************************---------------------------------- I. INTRODUCTION A wireless mesh network (WMN)[1] is a communication network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology, which often consists of mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways. The mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones and other wireless devices, which are connected to the Internet through the mesh routers. The mesh routers forward traffic to and from the gateways which is connected to the Internet. The coverage area of the radio nodes working as a single network is sometimes called a mesh cloud. Access to this mesh cloud is dependent on the radio nodes working in harmony with each other to create a radio network. A mesh network is reliable and offers redundancy. When one node can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate nodes. Wireless mesh networks can be implemented with various wireless technology including 802.11, 802.16, cellular technologies or combinations of more than one type. A wireless mesh network has some features which are similar to wireless ad-hoc network. It is often assumed that all nodes in a wireless mesh network are immobile but this is not necessary. The mesh routers may be highly mobile and are not limited to power, memory, calculating ability and operate as intelligent switching devices. A wireless mesh network has some features which are similar to wireless ad-hoc network. It is often assumed that all nodes in a wireless mesh network are immobile but this is not necessary. The mesh routers may be highly mobile and are not limited to power, memory, calculating ability and operate as intelligent switching devices. A. Classification of WMNs Wireless networks can be classified based on the connectivity types of the various network elements, which are either Point to Point (PTP), Point to Multi-Point (PTM) or Multi-Point to Multi-Point(MPM) networks. However, they are not scalable and their level of adaptability is low. PTM networks are moderately scalable, but they have low adaptability and reliability. In order to overcome these limitations, Multi-point to Multi- point (MTM) networks are offering features that provide high reliability, adaptability and scalability to accommodate a large number of users. As the number of nodes in the network [8] increases the transmission power needed for each node will be reduced. But, MTM wireless networks use multiple hops to increase coverage without the need for increasing the transmission power. MTM wireless networks are using today’s standard like the IEEE 802.11 family. These types of networks are called mesh networks. In this paper we focus on RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS