As discussed in the Getting Started guide, your initial configuration should use the Simple Configuration menu. This guide discusses how to tweak settings after applying your initial configuration. By default, the Simple Configuration only presents a small subset of all the possible configuration options of the Mesh Rider Radio. For further configuration in the GUI, click the Advanced Settings button at the bottom left hand corner of the page.

Wireless Settings

The radio's Mesh Rider wireless settings can be found by navigating to Network -> Wireless in the GUI. This is where you can configure the Mesh Rider wireless interface. The Wearable (and OEM) variants have an additional WiFi radio which is also configured here, and the Helix variant's band switching is also configured here. These are discussed in the next section.

Mesh Rider Radio

To modify the wireless settings of the Mesh Rider radio, click Edit next to the relevant radio interface. You should see a page similar to the one below. We recommend the following updates.

• For point-to-point networks such as a Control Station controlling a single UAV, or Robot, Enable Dynamically Adjust txpower based on neighbor sounding (Transmit Power Control).
• At power up, the Mesh Rider Radio will scan the environment and choose the best channel for the environment. A different channel can be chosen manually.
• For 2.4-GHz ISM-band radios, avoid using a channel bandwidth of 20-MHz to avoid normal WiFi interference.
• Change the Mesh ID and under Wireless Security, change the password.
• Do NOT change the Mode of operation. This should be pre-selected in the Simple Configuration menu.

Fig. 1 Wireless Settings

With the new GUI, network interface settings can now be adjusted directly from the Simple Configuration page. You can enable the DHCP client on BR-WAN by setting DHCP on BR-WAN to Client Enabled under the Network Configuration section. For more advanced changes such as custom static IPs or traffic prioritization, go to the Traffic Prioritization page under Link Optimization. Here, you can define application-specific QoS rules.

Note: The firewall is now open for all ports by default, so no additional firewall changes are required.

Fig. 2 Simple Configuration Settings

Mesh Settings

The default radio network configuration is mesh, and its settings can now be accessed directly by clicking Mesh Configuration from the left-hand sidebar. This section includes parameters like OGM Interval, Bridge Loop Avoidance, and Broadcast Settings. Fig. 3 shows the Mesh Configuration page in the new interface.

Fig. 3 Mesh Configuration Page

• OGM Broadcasting Interval: The radios send regular OGM broadcast packets to optimize mesh routing. Increasing the OGM interval makes the mesh less dynamic but consumes less resources. You may wish to increase the OGM broadcasting interval if your mesh exceeds 10 nodes.
• Bridge Loop Avoidance: Enable this option if your network includes broadcast loops formed externally to the Mesh Rider Radio mesh. e.g. a wired backbone connecting two mesh nodes.
• Distributed ARP table: Enable this option if you have a very widely distributed mesh (multiple hops).
• Fragmentation: The mesh layer will fragment packets which are larger than the radio interface's MTU. Generally this is not required, but the impact is minimal, so we recommend leaving it enabled.
• Group-aware multicast to unicast conversion: Converts all multicast traffic to unicast traffic. Not recommended for large swarms (e.g. more than 10 nodes) which rely on multicasting small low-rate packets to a large number of listeners.
• Version V routing protocol: For experimentation only. Uses a throughput-based metric for mesh routing decisions.
• Fast re-routing: Recommended for most mesh setups. Not recommended when a reliable broadcast link is required at long range.
• Number of self-broadcasts: The number of times broadcast packets which are generated by the radio are transmitted.
• Number of re-broadcasts: The number of times broadcast packets which originated from another host are re-broadcast.

Mesh Peer Filter 

We can tell a particular node not to send packets directly to another node. This could be used for force a mesh hop. This can be done in the GUI under Network Configuration → Mesh Configuration → Peer Filter Configuration . Input the MAC address of the node that you want to directly block.  

This can also be done over the CLI. For a temporary change use:

root@smartradio:~# batctl pr <MAC address> 

Traffic Prioritization and Link Optimization

Different types of traffic can be prioritized in the Traffic Prioritization menu. This is useful when operating in a crowded wireless medium. There are four different queues - Voice, Video, Best Effort, and Background. The Voice queue optimizes latency and may also be used for command and control, the Video queue optimizes throughput, the Best Effort Queue is essentially unoptimized, and the Background queue is for low-priority data.

To use these QoS features, open up the web GUI and navigate to Network -> Traffic Prioritization. The Mesh Rider Radio includes software to map different network protocols or ports to the various QoS queues. To do so, click Enable Differentiated Services, and add a classification rule to suit the application's needs. For example, you can send all UDP traffic to the Video queue which is beneficial for video transmission.

URLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Channel) and Video Optimization

The Mesh Rider Radio includes built-in optimizations for URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication) and video streaming. URLLC is typically used for command and control (C&C) traffic but can also be applied to any latency-sensitive application. For example, if your C&C application uses UDP port 7000, go to Link Optimization → Traffic Prioritization.

First, enable Optimize Command & Control and Voice for URLLC by toggling the setting. Then, click Add Rule under the Classification Rules section. In the new rule, set the Protocol to UDP, the Port to 7000, and the DSCP value to Voice, Command & Control (CS6). Optionally, fill in the Comment field for clarity. Once configured, click Save Configuration to apply the changes.

Keep in mind that if the URLLC rule is applied to high-bandwidth telemetry or multiple streams, it may negatively impact performance due to limited prioritization resources.

Fig. 4 Traffic Prioritization Settings

If Optimize Video Streaming is enabled, the radio will

1. Apply radio PHY settings which are optimized for video transmission
2. If the RSSI to a particular station is below the Video bad link threshold, then the radio will drop Video bad link (percentage) packets. This is an optional feature, and you should adjust the RSSI to a reasonable value for your application.

The RSSI bad-link threshold is an additional protection against network overload when the link quality is bad, but even without setting the RSSI bad-link threshold, the C&C queue is prioritized over the VI queue.

Latency, Throughput, and Robustness Optimization

The Sept 2023 Sense release firmware includes two new checkboxes. The Optimize for Robustness checkbox replaces the Diversity Rates Only checkbox in older firmware. This forces the radio to send the same data over both antennas redundantly which leads to smoother performance in highly dynamically changing conditions (e.g. UAVs, UGVs). Note that it also reduces the maximum achievable throughput by 50%.

The Optimize for Latency over Throughput does what the name implies. It results in improved latency, but the maximum achievable throughput is reduced by approximately half for high MCS rates.

Both of these settings are recommended for mobile robotics applications where low latency, smooth realtime video and C&C are required.

Further Link Optimization

Further Link Optimization is discussed in our RF Link Optimization document.