Optimum Coverage Area for Indoor Environments

Abstract

Recently, all buildings need to be covered by a suitable wireless network for various applications. The main challenges are to select enough Access Points (APs) that guarantee better coverage with less interference and the acceptable received signal. Also, choosing a suitable place for such APs directly affects the coverage area. In this research, a case study building with three floors was chosen to be covered by a suitable number of APs with optimum spaces. Our experiment is applied by Wireless InSite (WI) package with three scenarios; the first one is to conduct the covering by 5TXs which are installed in a chosen place that we believe will cover the building. The coverage is measured by distributing 12 Received Points (RPs) for each floor by measuring the amount of Receive Signal Strength (RSS). The results of such a scenario show a better covering with well-received power. The second scenario tries to reduce the APs to 3TXs in order to reduce the interference and cost by installing one TX for each floor in a suitable place. The simulation results of WI show acceptable coverage is achieved by those 3TXs that reduce the cost and interference. An accurate measurement is applied using the NetSpot package by Personal Computer (PC) to validate such a model for the same second scenario. The actual results confirm the good practical coverage.