Modelling of coverage in WLAN

Abstract

The freedom of being connected to the Internet everywhere without any wires has been a dream for people many years. Now there seems to be an opening for this dream. While waiting for the UMTS technology IP-Zones are now being build. An IP-Zone is a public place where Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) offers you a connection to the Internet. The WLAN technology has finally arrived with decent transmission speeds; with the introduction of IEEE 802.11b with transmission speeds up to11 Mbps. Subsequently we decided to take a closer look on this technology. This thesis presents an introduction to several WLAN technologies. We have taken a closer look at IEEE 802.11, 802.11b, 802.11a and the ETSI/BRAN standard HiperLAN type 2. We have been working on a general model of coverage within a room for WLAN. As a base model we had an indoor office path loss model intended for UMTS. The background of the model was unknown and had to be explored. We examined other free space models designed for indoor environments. We ended up with the Log-distance path loss model. Measurements were performed and used to adjust the model to fit the actual environments. We have also created a site survey on HiA 3rd floor in the old building in Grimstad, and proposed a way to cover the Master of Science room and the north-west wing of the building.