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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/mesh-and-ad-hoc-networks-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · TelecommunicationsMesh & Ad Hoc Network Patents: Who Files, What They Claim, Where the Gaps Sit
- 14.6% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees combine for 1,185 of the 8,132 records in scope, but the remaining ranked field thins out fast — a long tail rather than a duopoly.
- Filings peaked in 2021 at 536, then fell 58% by 2024. That drop (536 to 223) is the cleanest complete-year comparison the data supports; 2025 and 2026 are still filling in due to publication lag.
- Two IPC subclasses carry the field. H04W and H04L together tag the majority of records, while control, signalling and business-logic classes sit in single digits — a sign of where claim space still has room.
8,132
Published Records
15%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-58%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (536 records) with 2024 (223) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 8,132 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What counts as a mesh and ad hoc network patent here
This landscape covers records that combine mesh or ad hoc wireless networking terms with a functional claim element — packet routing, network topology, timing source, spectrum allocation or packet forwarding. That pairing filters out generic wireless filings and keeps the scope to documents that actually address how nodes discover, route through, or synchronise across a mesh, rather than merely using one as a transport layer. The dataset spans 2015 to a 2026 cut-off and holds 8,132 published records.
Because a single filing can carry several IPC subclasses, the technology composition below sums to more than the record total — that overlap is itself informative, showing how often mesh-routing claims are bundled with digital-transmission or general-transmission classifications rather than filed alone.
Filing activity and technology composition
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 8,132-record corpus: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 468 in 2017 to a peak of 536 in 2021, then declined to 223 by 2024 — a 58% fall across that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, so the recent-year dip should not be read as the field cooling further than the 2021-2024 figures already show.
IPC subclass composition
H04W (wireless communication networks) tags 57.3% of records and H04L (digital information transmission) tags 49.4%, confirming that most filings sit at the intersection of radio-layer mesh mechanics and packet-level routing logic. Every other subclass — transmission hardware, data processing, business logic, switching, control systems and signalling — sits under 10%, which is where narrower, less-crowded claim space is concentrated.
Shares are the percentage of the 8,132 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Representative and most-cited filings
Representative Filing
US10687265B2 — Wireless mesh network topology map management method based on positioning technique
WNC CORPORATION
Filed by WNC Corporation and granted 2020-06-16, this patent covers deploying a main access point and successive additional access points, running a positioning procedure to fix each new AP's coordinates relative to the main AP, building a topology map from those coordinates, and then controlling each AP to connect to whichever existing AP gives it the shortest path.The claim chain ties physical positioning directly to topology-map construction and connection selection — a narrower and more specific combination than generic mesh self-configuration claims.
Most-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080004904A1 | Systems and methods for providing interoperability among healthcare devices | 1,924 |
| 2 | US20070087756A1 | Multifactorial optimization system and method | 1,866 |
| 3 | US20130201316A1 | System and method for server based control | 1,724 |
| 4 | US20080001735A1 | Mesh network personal emergency response appliance | 1,719 |
| 5 | US20070276270A1 | Mesh network stroke monitoring appliance | 1,217 |
| 6 | US20100177749A1 | Methods of and apparatus for programming and managing diverse network components, including electronic-ink ba… | 1,082 |
| 7 | US8457013B2 | Wireless dual-function network device dynamically switching and reconfiguring from a wireless network router … | 936 |
| 8 | US20050010653A1 | Content distribution system for operation over an internetwork including content peering arrangements | 925 |
| 9 | US6785704B1 | Content distribution system for operation over an internetwork including content peering arrangements | 912 |
| 10 | US20100177076A1 | Edge-lit electronic-ink display device for use in indoor and outdoor environments | 895 |
Citation counts reward older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate them — read this table as a map of influence within the searched corpus, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the concentration and citation data indicate
Three read-outs from the ranking, the trend and the citation table, framed for the decisions they actually inform.
Concentration
14.6%
top 5 share of 8,132 records
Leadership is real but not a lock
The top five assignees combine for 1,185 records, 14.6% of everything in scope. That leaves the substantial majority of filings spread across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants, which means the field is still open to a new entrant who claims a specific mechanism well rather than trying to out-file an incumbent.
Based on the ranked assignee table
Momentum
536 → 223
peak-year to 2024 filings
Post-peak decline, not a collapse
Filings fell 58% from the 2021 peak of 536 to 223 in 2024, the most recent year with a complete picture. That is a real pullback in new filing activity after a dense filing period, worth factoring into freedom-to-operate timing, but the 2025-2026 figures are too new to read as a continuation of the trend.
2021-2024 comparison, publication-lag adjusted
Citation weight
1,924 citations
top-cited record
Citation leaders skew toward device-monitoring mesh use
The most-cited records in this corpus are healthcare and personal-emergency mesh appliances rather than pure routing-protocol patents, which tells you the highest-influence prior art a new filing will be checked against may come from an adjacent application domain, not from a competing telecom vendor.
From the most-cited records table
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Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to mesh & ad hoc networks patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Competitive Landscape
Who is filing, and where they are pulling back
The ranked assignee table spans 100 companies, from network infrastructure vendors to lighting and smart-metering firms that use mesh networking as an enabling layer rather than a core product.
Leader
295 records
leading assignee
Infrastructure vendors hold the top slots
The leading assignee's 295 records sit well ahead of fifth place at 194 and tenth place at 124 — a real but not overwhelming gap, consistent with a market where routing and topology mechanics are contested across several large filers rather than owned by one.
Ranked assignee table
Momentum
0% to -100% YoY
recent-year change, tracked assignees
Most tracked leaders show flat or falling recent-year output
Several of the assignees tracked for recent-year momentum show 0 filings in the latest year and year-on-year changes as steep as -100%, which fits the broader post-2021 pullback rather than signalling any single company's retreat from the space.
Recent-year momentum by assignee
Collaboration
15 co-filings
strongest co-assignee pairs
Co-assignee pairs cluster around one filer's inventor network
The strongest co-assignee pairs in the dataset all involve the same corporate filer paired with different named inventors at 15 shared records each, suggesting a stable in-house team rather than a cross-company joint filing pattern.
Co-assignee pair analysis
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Signify Holding B.V. | 2 | 0% |
| Itron Inc. | 1 | -50% |
| Cisco Technology Inc. | 0 | — |
| Google LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Qualcomm Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Strong Force VCN Portfolio 2019 LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) | 0 | — |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this analysis
The figures above set the boundaries of the field. Turning them into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going claim-by-claim in the specific sub-area you're working in.
Map your own claim against the crowded classes
H04W and H04L cover the majority of records — before drafting, check whether your specific mechanism sits inside that dense core or in one of the thinner adjacent classes.
Explore the technology in Patsnap EurekaTrack the post-peak filers
Several leading assignees show flat or declining recent-year filing; watch whether that reflects a genuine pullback or a shift toward trade-secret protection.
Set up assignee monitoring in Patsnap EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about mesh and ad hoc network patents
This dataset holds 8,132 published records from 2015 through a 2026 cut-off. Filings peaked in 2021 at 536 and fell to 223 by 2024, a 58% decline across that three-year span. The 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so recent-year counts will keep rising as more filings publish.
The ranked assignee table covers 100 companies spanning network infrastructure, semiconductor, lighting and metering firms. The leading assignee holds 295 records, with the top five combining for 1,185 records — 14.6% of all 8,132 records in scope. That leaves a long tail of firms with far fewer filings each, so the field is not dominated by a single company.
The largest IPC subclasses are H04W (wireless communication networks, 57.3% of records) and H04L (digital information transmission, 49.4%), reflecting a focus on radio-layer mesh mechanics combined with packet-level routing. Smaller subclasses include general transmission hardware, data processing, business-process logic, switching, control systems and signalling, each under 10% of records, which marks out narrower claim space that is less crowded.
US10687265B2, assigned to WNC Corporation and granted in June 2020, claims a method for building a mesh network topology map by positioning each new access point relative to a main access point and then connecting each AP along the shortest available path. The claim chain ties physical positioning directly to topology-map construction and connection routing, which is narrower than a generic self-organising mesh claim. Anyone building positioning-based topology mapping in a mesh network should check their specific coordinate and connection-selection steps against this claim chain.
The thinnest IPC overlaps relative to the core H04W/H04L claim density are control-system integration (G05B), signalling and alarm use cases (G08B), and business-logic layered routing (G06Q), each tagging only a few percent of records. Timing-source synchronisation and dynamic spectrum allocation within mesh links also show comparatively sparse dedicated claim coverage. These are the areas where a specific, well-drafted claim is less likely to run into dense prior art from the leading assignees.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Mesh & Ad Hoc Networks Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.