“Espressif Systems Mesh Development Framework (ESP-MDF) is the official mesh development framework for the ESP32 chip.
ESP-MESH Overview
With the development of the Internet of Things, the scale of networked devices is rapidly expanding. However, the traditional senario of wireless networking implements a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint star topology. All terminal nodes must be connected to the hub (router). This will lead to the following two issues:
Limited network capacity: the hub (router) can be directly connected to 10 devices at most.
Limited network coverage: all terminal nodes must be located within the Wi-Fi coverage of the central node, making the networking senario inappropriate for large venues or places with multiple layers.
In order to meet the growing needs for wireless networking for the Internet of Things, Espressif launched the ESP-MESH wireless networking technology. Different from traditional wireless networking, ESP-MESH nodes can dynamically talk to each other, and self-organize into a tree network. Any node can transmit data with another node and forward packets.
The decentralized ESP-MESH network topology features:
- High reliability: the structure is robust, because even when some nodes fail in the network, other nodes can still self-organize dynamically to form a network.
- Extensive coverage: any two mesh nodes can communicate with each other, which is suitanle for the networking demands in large venues and places with multiple layers.
- Great network capacity: over 10,000 devices can be connected into the wireless network.”