Wireless mesh networks (WMN) play an important role in the next-generation wireless communication systems because it can support broadband services with ubiquitous coverage by low transmission power. In this paper, we propose a multi-channel ring-based wireless mesh network and develop an analytical framework to evaluate the capacity and coverage of such a network. In the analytical framework, we first establish a physical (PHY)/medium access control (MAC) cross layer throughput performance model by including the carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) MAC protocol and distance-based rate adaptation with multi-hop connections. Based on the derived throughput model, we apply the mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) optimization approach to maximize the capacity (throughput) and service coverage of a mesh cell, in which the number of rings in a mesh cell and the radius for each ring are determined.