// WIRELESS DESIGN AND VALIDATION · HANS STUDY · ONTARIO, CANADA
Wireless design and validation
The heat map you were handed is a prediction, and often it is a prediction made from a floor plan with the walls guessed. Coverage that exists in software and not in the building is the most common wireless problem there is.
I design wireless networks and I measure them afterwards. Ekahau ECSE Design and CWNA certified, and independent of every access point manufacturer, which matters here because wireless design is where vendor tools quietly recommend more of the vendor's product. See the independence policy.
Predictive design, done properly
- Requirements before radios. What has to work, where, at what data rate, and for how many devices. Coverage for a phone is not coverage for a barcode scanner or a wireless camera.
- Real wall attenuation. Modelled from what the building is actually made of, which is the single largest source of error in predictive designs.
- AP placement and count driven by capacity and roaming behaviour, not by spacing a grid across a drawing.
- Channel and power plan that accounts for what is already in the air, including the neighbours.
- Mounting reality. Ceiling height, obstructions, cable runs, PoE budget and what facilities will actually allow on the wall.
Validation, which is the part people skip
A predictive design is a hypothesis. A validation survey is measurement, walked on site with calibrated tooling after installation, and it routinely disagrees with the prediction.
- Measured signal, noise, interference and data rate across the actual space.
- Roaming behaviour, which is where designs that pass a coverage test still fail in use.
- Interference sources that were never in the model, including the ones that only run during a shift.
- A written report of predicted against measured, with the survey data attached.
Wireless for security systems
Wireless cameras, wireless locks and handheld devices have requirements ordinary office wireless does not. Cameras hold a constant uplink stream rather than bursting. Wireless locks sleep and must wake reliably. Handhelds roam constantly and fail visibly when roaming is wrong. Designing all three against a laptop-shaped assumption is why these deployments disappoint.
When a survey settles an argument
Where coverage was specified, signed off and does not work, a validation survey produces evidence rather than opinion. That is frequently what a dispute needs, and it pairs directly with expert opinion work when the disagreement has already reached that stage.
Find out what the coverage actually is
Predictive design before installation is cheap. Measuring afterwards is cheaper than arguing about it, and far cheaper than adding access points by guesswork.