Fashion Products Company

The AutoCAD drawing was sent from the fashion products company to be formatted in LanPlanner. Customer gave the required LanPlanner details of the drawing. Which included, the height of the building, the length of the building (only required if drawing is not scale), and obstruction information. The facility is 35 feet tall roughly 300' in length and roughly 600' in width. The building warehouse area consisted of 32' racks throughout the warehouse and some conveyer equipment. The office area consisted of office rooms and cubical areas.

After the the AutoCAD drawing was inserted into LanPlanner software, LanPlanner will format the building. Formatting the building is a crucial part in the site survey process. In order to accurately predict and measure the RF infrastructure the format process must be accurate. The format process consist of telling LanPlanner from the original drawing what type of obstruction is in the building and what the obstruction is made of and the height of the obstruction. With this building the main obstructions were the metal inventory racks and conveyer equipment as well as cubical in the office area.

After the format process, Access Points/Ports can be placed throughout the warehouse and office area. The fashion products company was predicted to have 21 Motorola AP300's with 2 5dBm Omni pipe Antenna' for the warehouse and 9 AP7131's with Motorola facade or 6 small external Omni 5dBm gain antennas in the office. Each AP300 and AP 7131 was placed roughly 34' from the ceiling for the warehouse and 12' for each office AP7131. Each AP300 and AP7131 color represents a channel. For the least amount of channel interference for 802.11b/g 2.4Ghz band, channels 1, 6, & 11 are to be used. Black represents channel 1, Yellow represents channel 6, and Red for channel 11. For 802.11n 5Ghz band, Red for channel 100, Yellow for 104, Purple for 34, Blue for 38, Violet for 42, Black for 46, Gray for 52, Light Gray for 56, Pink for 60, and Maroon for 64. It is to be noted that for the 5Ghz band their are many non-overlapping channels.

With the AP's placed then LanPlanner can predict the RSSI(Received Signal Strength Indication), SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), Channels, and the throughput. For this to Industrial Products Manufacturer company LanPlanner predicted the 21 AP's would cover the warehouse from 6Mbs to 54Mbs of coverage and 54Mbs to 130Mbs for the office area. In the colored heat map drawing of the warehouse, each color represents a different amount of RSSI or throughput. RED is a -50dBm(dBm is the power ratio in decibels) or can represent any where from 48Mbs to 54Mbs of throughput. YELLOW is a -60dBm or can also represent anywhere from 36Mbs to 48Mbs of throughput. GREEN is a -70dBm or also represented anywhere from 24Mbs to 36Mbs of throughput.

Also it is noted that the RSSI for both 802.11b/g and 802.11n are the same but the throughput/Data Rate will be different. The data rate can also be represented by color. Red is from 104Mbs to 130Mbs, Orange is 78Mbs, Green/Light Green is from 58Mbs to 65Mbs and for Dark Blue/Light Blue is from 6Mbs to 54Mbs of throughput.

When the install is complete the measurement process takes place on site. LanPlanner software uses a Motorola tested and certified wireless card to take measurements. In the facility the LanPlanner engineer walks around the facility and takes measurements from any given point. LanPlanner records the RSSI, SNR, and or Data rate in real time from the surrounding approved Access Points. For this fashion products company each RED dot represents a point at which a measurement had taken place. LanPlanner takes the measurements and produces a heat map. The RED color represents -50dBm or 48-54Mbs of throughput as stated in the prediction process, the YELLOW represents -60dBm 36 - 48Mbs of throughput, and GREEN is -70dBm or 24-36Mbs of throughput. The WHITE space in the drawing is indicating where a measurement was not taken. This could be caused by pallets in the way or product on the floor to where a measurement could not be taken. No measurement was taken for the office area as this is pending implementation of the AP7131's.