MeshFS: A distributed file system for cloud-based wireless mesh network

Wireless mesh networks have attracted considerable interest in recent years in both the academic and industrial communities. As wireless mesh routers can be interconnected through wireless links, wireless mesh networks provide greater flexibility and better cost-effectiveness. In particular, due to their ease of installation and maintenance, they can be used in different environments, especially where cable installation is difficult. Apart from providing routing service, wireless mesh networks can also be employed to provide other value-added services. Inspired by cloud computing and other distributed file systems, this paper presents the design and implementation of MeshFS, a distributed file system specifically for wireless mesh networks. A key technical challenge is to develop a lightweight software system that can be implemented over memory-limited wireless mesh network environments. With the aim of providing a lightweight distributed file system, allowing limited resources to be utilized more effectively, MeshFS integrates scattered storage resources from wireless mesh routers to provide a mountable file system interface to Unix/Linux file system with fault-tolerant capabilities and cloud computing-like storage functions.