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Learning Basics of Radio Physics for Meshnet

I don't exactly remember when & by whom I first came across the idea of meshnet, but I do remember the video that inspired me to work towards meshnet.

From then on, I started to explore more and more links on the web about meshnet and this is how I aggregated the list of various resources, community knowledge base & community meshnet projects.

Out of these resources, I consider a book named WNDW - Wireless Network in Developing World to be one of the most important resource. The reason I consider it to be important is because this book is a practical guide to build a wireless network written by field experts covering every basics including radio physics, telecommunication basics, antennnas, networking, installation & maintenance. The digital copy of this book is available under CC-BY-SA and you can download the free digital copy of this book.

I am finding this book extremely useful and have started learning Radio Physics since the meshnet that we are trying to build is a wireless meshnetwork using 802.11 (Wifi). WiFi signals are electromagnetic radiations (EMR) also known as Radio Signals that operate at 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency (license exempt bands).

Setting up meshnet involves setting up wireless nodes, antennas that propogates the signals and in order to do that we need to understand the basics of radio physics not just computer applications & protocols.

Any node or host machine has to satisfy certain requirements in order to be able to join a network. These requirements are labelled traditionally as layers like in OSI Layering & TCP/IP Layering.

No matter what layering model, the Physical layer forms the foundation which denotes the signal carrier & the medium of transmission. It is this physical layer that deals mostly with the property of radio physics namely frequency, bandwidth, wavelength, phases, etc., If we proceed without understanding these basics we might end up with a poor network infrastructure.

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