Influence of people shadowing on optimal deployment of WLAN access points

With their low cost and high-speed data rate capabilities, installations of IEEE 802.11-based wireless local area networks (WLANs) are growing exponentially. Although many organizations have started using WLANs, there are still very few tools available that can help the design of WLAN networks. As a result, the current deployment of WLAN networks remains ad-hoc in nature. The objective of the work reported here is to develop modeling tools for performance optimization of WLAN networks and WLAN access points. In particular, propagation models are available that can predict the signal strength and interference in a WLAN system by taking into account environment specific parameters such as the structure of the building, presence or absence of stationary obstacles etc [1]. This paper investigates the influence of moving obstacles, such as people, on radio wave propagation inside a building and the effect on received signal quality in a WLAN. Our findings suggest that the presence of moving obstacles, such as people, seriously affects the performance of the system by introducing heavy variations in the received signal strength.