Despite significant advances in parts of the physical layer, available WLAN systems still cannot offer wired equivalent bandwidth. In this paper we propose a novel concept, called Wireless Self-Organizing Backbone Mesh Network (WiSoNet), for a wireless network infrastructure as a backbone and describe its long-term potential. WiSoNet combines two major IEEE Standards - IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) to build a heterogeneous wireless network topology. To aggregate bandwidth of multiple WLAN connections we introduce a hybrid network solution that uses ad-hoc mechanisms. Further to decrease the amount of administration and resource management, we use specific algorithms for the self-organization of routing and channels assignment. Since the WiMAX-based supply network already supports quality of service, we propose mechanisms to extend the QoS to end-users. Accordingly, we present our prototypical system implementation and discuss the issues we will focus on in the future.
