What is a Wireless Site Survey?
A Wi-Fi site survey is a structured, data-driven assessment of your wireless environment. Its purpose is to analyse how Wi-Fi signals behave within your building and to identify the optimal design for delivering reliable, high-performance connectivity across your entire facility.
Introduction
Reliable wireless connectivity is now expected in any working environment. The demands of the wireless network has exponentially grown in recent years from a nice to have option for connecting to the corporate network, to the primary connection for all users. Wireless networks provide flexibility in office environments, allowing you to roam and work where you can best collaborate with your colleagues.
In the industrial/manufacturing sectors they provide connectivity for IOT devices that support manufacturing and health and safety of the environments.
Warehousing & Distribution have always relied on wireless for goods scanning, but this has now expanded to support robotics for automated picking to improve efficiency within warehouse operations.
With the above demands on wireless and the latest Wi-Fi 7 standards, designing your wireless network right the first time is critical.
Designing Your Wireless Network with a Wireless Site Survey
This is where a wireless survey comes in. But not all surveys are equal, each survey has to be specific to the requirements of the business. By providing a consultative approach and fully understanding the needs of the business, this ensures that the results of a survey provide the assurances that the wireless will perform as expected; whilst also considering clients budgets and future expansion needs.
Wireless survey to Assess the Performance of an Existing Wireless Network
Is the wireless survey to assess the performance of an existing wireless network? If so ISDM would concentrate on coverage, throughput and interference of the current network and discuss what recent tickets have been raised to gain an understanding of the problems being experienced.
As an example, ISDM were recently contracted to review wireless in an office where we were told coverage was an issue. On discussion with the helpdesk all tickets were related to MS-Teams. Coverage was not the issue; the main issue was that the wireless had not been optimised for voice and video.
Wireless Survey for New Builds or Refurbishments
An on-site survey may not be possible for a new build or refurbishment as the site may still be in the construction phase. Therefore, a desktop survey can be completed to create a predictive model of the wireless network and to agree on the quantities and locations of access points. Following the installation, a post installation survey should then be completed to allow validation of the initial predictive design for sign off.
Understanding what Connects to the Wireless Network is Critical
A key part of any wireless network design is understanding what devices will be connecting to it. ISDM will always discuss this in detail with the client at the outset, as different device types have very different demands on the network.
In warehouse and industrial environments, for example, IoT devices, automation systems, and robotics often have specific latency, bandwidth, and reliability requirements. These operational demands must be factored into the wireless design to ensure consistent performance and avoid disruption.
What to Consider when Designing your Wireless Network
Considerations must be made around the physical placement of access points to ensure they can be mounted away from items that can affect the signal (lighting, air conditioning, tray work), can you actually get a network cable to the proposed access point location.
Future-Proofing your Wireless Network
When planning a wireless upgrade, it’s important to look beyond immediate requirements and consider emerging standards such as Wi-Fi 7. While client device support will continue to mature, designing with Wi-Fi 7 in mind ensures your network is ready to take advantage of higher throughput, lower latency, and improved performance as adoption increases.
However, deploying next-generation wireless isn’t just about the access points. Organisations must also assess whether their wired network infrastructure can support the increased bandwidth and Power over Ethernet (PoE) requirements of the latest access point hardware.
Conclusion
In summary, a wireless site survey is not about providing a nice heat map plan with green everywhere showing perfect coverage. It is about understanding a customers access requirements, application and device usage and future needs of the wireless technology we are designing. This ensures that the user experience is not compromised and the investment in the technology is fully realised.
Take the First Step Toward Better Connectivity
ISDM Solutions use our in house engineering team to complete wireless site surveys and wireless/network designs. Our experience across multiple industries ensures we have the experience to design supply and support your solutions.
Contact us today to discuss your requirements and request a wireless site survey quotation.
Written by Richard Shelley,
Head of Enterprise Networks, ISDM Solutions
