Indoor Wi-Fi
With the rapid adoption of broadband, IOT and Industry 4.0 Revolution technology and applications in most corporate and enterprises, fast Internet connectivity is paramount. The critical infrastructure in ensuring connectivity is good Wi-Fi network. The proliferation of devices has taken Wi-Fi performance to a new approach. What constitute a good Wi-Fi network?
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Strong Wi-Fi footprint – Wide signal coverage required
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Wi-Fi capacity – The number of concurrent users and concurrent connected devices
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Internet speed – How fast is the upload and download speed can users achieve?
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Tackling the above requires both professional Wi-Fi design services and reliable Wi-Fi solutions.
Strong Wi-Fi Footprint
No single Wi-Fi product can overcome barriers and obstacles across all building walls and structures. To achieve optimum Wi-Fi signal coverage with the maximum footprint, wireless engineers need to ensure the followings are taken into consideration:
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Antenna Design – Sectorized, panel, omni antennas deliver different signal output
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Antenna Gain – It is not the higher the better!
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RF Propagation – How wireless signal travels and where you want the coverage to be?
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RF Interference – How noisy is the environment? RF Interferences will cause deterioration of signal
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Installation and placement of Access Points location also play a very important factor in ensuring good signal penetration.
Wi-Fi Capacity
Depending on types of application the Wi-Fi Access Points are designed, Wi-Fi capacity can be critically important in some of the high user traffic environment. For example, a lecture hall with 500 hundred students connecting to the Access Point downloading online lecture streaming simultaneously or a football stadium offering free Wi-Fi services to thousands of fans.
In this case, the most important element in designing workable Wi-Fi infrastructure must include understanding the Access Point con-current users’ maximum capacity and bandwidth required per user. Load-balancing routers and local caching servers are important as well to eliminate bandwidth chocking at ISP’s network.
Internet Speed
Today Internet Services Providers are offering more competitive packages like bandwidth-on-demand to meet users who consume bandwidth-demanding applications such as gaming, video conferencing, high-quality video surveillance over Wi-Fi networks.
As such, Wi-Fi Access Point design requires more than just good signal but processing power to bring across high-speed Internet traffic. Today, we see the release of Wi-Fi 6 certification based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard. Wi-Fi 6 technology brings not just high-speed WiFi Access Points products but also embedded other upgrades which include:
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Higher throughput (speed) Access Points
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Improve capacity and increased con-current connected devices
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Improved power efficiency ​
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Knowing what applications and your business Internet requirements are important to search for the right kind of Wi-Fi solutions that enables good user experiences and uninterrupted Internet connectivity. Using the correct design of Wi-Fi infrastructure, one not only saves your IT investment cost but definitely increase organization productivity with the right use of Wi-Fi technology.
Outdoor Wi-Fi
​Outdoor Wi-Fi in general are services offered by the following providers:
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Free public Wi-Fi by municipal councils
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Government Free Wi-Fi initiatives
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Extension of Wi-Fi services by Internet Services Providers
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Mobile operator data offloading facilities for poor cellular coverage
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Extension of indoor Wi-Fi by hotel and resort operators
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​Generally, the services are offered free to the public and normally these Wi-Fi facilities are available in public venue environments such as parks, shopping centers, tourist attraction areas, bus and train stations, etc.
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With this in mind, the deployment and design for outdoor Wi-Fi are very much different from indoor and building Wi-Fi. Moreover, these are public areas where users are nomadic and mobile in nature. There are not many fixed or repeated users in a free public Wi-Fi environment. In contrast, providers will expect new users connecting to the network all the time as consumers prefer free Wi-Fi networks over their service providers’ data plan especially pre-paid mobile users with limited data plan capacity.
As such, designing outdoor Wi-Fi will require the following conditions to be complied:
Wi-Fi Security and Authentication login
Encryption of Wi-Fi Access Point and Authenticated login servers need to be in place to limit and improve Wi-Fi network security.
Large Coverage Area Needed
Outdoor Wi-Fi users are mainly targeted at cellphone or tablet users. Signal coverage for Wi-Fi Access points needs to have strong Wi-Fi footprint
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Limited Time Usage
To prevent free public Wi-Fi network congestion, providers need to limit the usage time of each user to free the DHCP MAC addresses and to prevent MAC addresses lock-up
Wi-Fi Access Point Durability
Outdoor Wi-Fi Access Points are subjected to harsh weather environments. IP67 compliance enclosure box is preferred to protect the electronics component against water, dust, heat, and cold. Installation of outdoor Wi-Fi Access Points needs to be carried out by certified professionals.
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Interference Mitigation
Installation of outdoor Wi-Fi is mainly carried out in public venues. In this case, there will be co-location with other Access Points. As such, the Access Points need to have interference mitigation features to manage radio frequencies congestions from different Wi-Fi signals.
More importantly, since most outdoor public Wi-Fi services are free to use, operators need to have a sustainable business model to ensure long term availability of these free Wi-Fi services. There are a few successful business models for operators to generate and recoup their Return-on-Investment for the free public Wi-Fi facility:
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Combination of free and paid Wi-Fi usage with bandwidth capping and time limit
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Mobile Advertising
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SSID sharing for mobile data offloading to operators
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Value-Added Services tie in with the Wi-Fi network (for e.g., video surveillance, etc.)
