Wireless Network Planning For WLAN

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) was initially introduced as a complementary mean of wired LAN; however, it is operated by the evolution of public wireless local area network with its progress in the mobility, scalability, security, and speed. With the expansion of coverage area, the increase of the number of users and the network capacity, the WLAN wireless network planning has been playing a key role in the process of WLAN construction.WLAN wireless network planning is a process which designs the layout of the wireless network reasonably and practicably, with minimum investment to meet current needs and to ensure that the network is easy for future expansion. The planning is based on coverage requirements, capacity requirements and other special needs, combined with coverage area of the landscape features.This paper focuses on the wireless network planning of WLAN at hot spots, including interference avoidance, coverage planning, capacity planning, frequency planning and cell multiplexing.The paper consists of six chapters. Chapter 4 introduces indoor and outdoor propagation model, WLAN coverage mode, link budget methodology to solve the key issues in coverage planning, such as, the relationship between communication distance and the coverage.In order to accurately assess its ability of supporting data services, in Chapter 5, we apply the existing two-dimensional Markov chain models of the back-off window scheme, and analyze the saturation normalized system throughput of IEEE 802.11a on two respects of the frame forming efficiency and the MAC layer channel transport efficiency. According to the calculated theoretical maximum throughput, we study the number of users that a single AP can access, considering the network traffic characteristics. This method will be useful for the estimation of the actual throughput and network capacity planning.Chapter 6 introduces the available frequency bands and the frequency division of IEEE 802.11x standards, in which two-dimensional, three-dimensional frequency distribution and hybrid channel configuration are proposed.