WLAN planning process:

Demand Collection

1. Detailed drawings of the coverage area are the basic requirement.

2. Different projects have different requirements. The preceding requirements are the basic requirements of most projects. If customers have any special requirements, the requirements must be taken into consideration.

Site Survey Information

Based on different scenarios and requirements, site surveys are classified into simple site surveys and detailed site surveys with consideration of the investment cost.

Simple site survey: Applicable to simple scenarios or some pre-sales projects that do not have detailed requirements on the solution.

Detailed site survey: Applicable to complex scenarios or post-sales network planning projects that have high requirements on the solution.

Planning and Design

Coverage Design

During network planning, it is recommended that the coverage radius of a single AP be 20 m. The recommended value is applicable to customers who have no clear requirement on field strength and do not consider interference or obstacles.

Signal field strength calculation formulation: (without consideration of factors such as interference and line loss)

Final signal field strength = AP's transmit power + Antenna gain - Signal attenuation value caused by the transmission distance - Signal attenuation value caused by obstacles

Deployment Design

Channel design principles:

1. Search available channels in the channel compliance table and make confirmation with local customers.

2. Avoid co-channel interference: The same channel cannot be used in any two directions.

Deployment design principles:

1. Reduce the number of obstacles that signals have to traverse.

2. Ensure that APs directly face the target coverage area.

3. APs must be deployed in areas that are away from interference sources.

Bandwidth Design

Basic principle: A single-band AP supports 20 access users. A dual-band AP supports 40 access users. The recommended value is applicable to customers who have no clear requirements on bandwidth.

Power Supply and Cable Layout

Design Roadmap:

Independent site survey is not necessary for information in a simple site survey table, because network planning personnel have been to the site during communication with customers.

In the onsite environment, buildings are classified into concrete, common glass walls, and wooden doors. There is no third-party or non-Wi-Fi interference source. Make confirmation with customers that cables can be laid out on ceilings.

Device Selection:

In an indoor settled scenario, select the AP6010DN that supports 801.11n, dual-band coverage, and access of terminals supporting various protocols to increase the number of access users.

Coverage Design:

Use load bearing walls that can cause high signal attenuation to segment a large coverage area into several small coverage areas. This project segments an office room and a conference room into eight areas. A single AP can satisfy an area. Therefore, a total of eight APs are required.

Deployment Design:

Each AP is installed on the middle of the ceiling of an area. The channel of the AP is separated from that of other APs (1/149, 6/153, and 11/157)

When there are 100 employees, a maximum of 30 employees can access the network in a small area, this meets the requirement of a dual AP for the number of access users. The maximum bandwidth required by each area is 30 Mbps. Based on the bandwidth design principle, the 802.11n dual-band AP supports access of 30 users. 80 Mbps bandwidth satisfies the access bandwidth requirement.

Power Supply and Cable Layout

The longest distance between a PoE switch and an AP is 70 m, which satisfies the requirement.

Indoor settled products are applicable to the following typical scenarios.

The following table lists some special focuses of the typical scenarios in addition to planning principles and steps described in the preceding sections.