The issues pertaining to capacity, fairness, and energy efficiency are central to all wireless networks, including wireless sensor and mesh networks. In this paper, we consider hybrid sensor and mesh networks as paradigms for fair and energy efficient communication. A hybrid network consists of sensor or mesh nodes with wireless communication capability and some infrastructure in the form of cables with wireless transceivers attached to their ends. We investigate the trade-offs that exist between the amount of infrastructure and the improvement in fairness and energy efficiency over a pure wireless network. In particular, we show that a limited amount of infrastructure is enough to significantly improve fairness as well as energy efficiency. Moreover, in many scenarios the aggregate capacity of the network can also be substantially unproved with the help of a limited infrastructure.
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