Coverage prediction and optimization algorithms for indoor environments

Abstract

A heuristic algorithm is developed for the prediction of indoor coverage. Measurements on one floor of an office building are performed to investigate propagation characteristics and validations with very limited additional tuning are performed on another floor of the same building and in three other buildings. The prediction method relies on the free-space loss model for every environment, this way intending to reduce the dependency of the model on the environment upon which the model is based, as is the case with many other models. The applicability of the algorithm to a wireless testbed network with fixed WiFi 802.11b/g nodes is discussed based on a site survey. The prediction algorithm can easily be implemented in network planning algorithms, as will be illustrated with a network reduction and a network optimization algorithm. We aim to provide an physically intuitive, yet accurate prediction of the path loss for different building types.