Project Planning in Wireless Deployments

Wireless Project Planning

The Project planning in Wireless Deployments is often broken down into following phases and the same in illustrated in sections below:

Identifying the customer requirement

Identifying the customer requirement either by directly obtaining the information from the customer or by self-assessment is the most important part in any successful Wi-Fi deployment. The requirement of two different business types may not necessarily be the same. Even the requirement of same business type could be unique across the projects.

Following are the compressive list of generally found Business types and are the ones that I had personally dealt with:

  1. Schools
  2. Universities
  3. Shopping Malls
  4. Airports
  5. Sea Ports
  6. Bus Stations / Metro Stations
  7. Casinos
  8. Hotels
  9. Service Apartments
  10. Stadiums
  11. Exhibitions

Determining the deployment model that suits the customer requirement

  1. High-Density Specific Wi-Fi Deployment Model:
    High-Density Wi-Fi deployments are generally warranted when we anticipate large number of WiFi devices operate in a relatively smaller area. High-Density specific Wi-Fi Deployment model would require us to take into consideration the following:
  2. Maximum expected user density in any given area.
  3. Identifying the devices and applications that will be used.
  4. Delay sensitivity the applications can withstand while using the WLAN services.
  5. Expected bandwidth per device / application.

Useful Link: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/solutions/industries/docs/education/cisco_wlan_design_guide.pdf

  • Location Specific Wi-Fi Deployment Model:

Location specific Wi-Fi deployments are generally warranted when the customer is more interested in tracking the movement of visitors in their venue. This is also required to facilitate people in indoor navigations wherein the Wi-Fi deployments are integrated with SDKs for Indoor Navigation.

Though the indoor navigation would have an additional requirement of app installation on visitor devices, but it comes at an unique advantage of indoor navigation wherein GPS fails miserably.

Location Specific Wi-Fi Deployment Model would require us to take into consideration the following:
a. Area of interest wherein we expect greater location accuracy to be obtained. This area should be having the wireless access points deployed in a convex hull fashion.

b. Wireless Access Points that supports Hyperlocation. There are certain Cisco Access Points having integrated antennas to support Hyperlocation for example the 4800 series Access Point. Also the modular access points with the option of Hyperlocation module could be considered.

c. Mounting height of the Wireless Access Points. Generally it is recommended that for location specific deployments the wireless access points are mounted not higher than 4.5 meters.

Useful Link: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Mobility/WiFiLBS-DG/wifich5.html

  • Application Specific/ Wireless VoIP Wi-Fi deployment model.

While taking into consideration the Application specific deployment model, the Wireless VoIP deployment model can be most thought of as a solution, since wireless VoIP deployment model will warrant strict design considerations. This includes:

  1. Preference to 5 GHz only SSID.
  2. Lesser number of SSIDs in the venue to enhance the airtime fairness.
  3. Design to guarantee atleast -65 dBm signal strength and a SNR better than 20 dBm
  4. Disabling of Lower data rates.
  5. Sufficient channel overlap to facilitate smooth roaming
  6. Enabling of call admission control on the SSIDs
  7. Quality of Service chosen as platinum
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/enterprise-networks/rf-solutions/net_implementation_white_paper0900aecd804f1a46.pdf

Understanding the application and services the customer is intending to use is lot more vital in successful deployment of WiFi.

While few of the customers will be technically competent to understand their requirement in entirely and develop a “Specification Document” thus mandating it for the integrators to full fill all their project requirements.

However there are as well few customers who may not be in a position to completely understand their current requirement and / or forecast their future requirement. For such customers, it should be the moral responsibility for the integrators to help them understand in full their current and future requirement and develop a “Specification Document”.

Developing the Specification Document

Specification document generally helps us capture the customer requirement covering their current and future needs and the obligation of the integrator in meeting those requirements.

In most of the cases, the Specification Document is developed by the customer or the customer appointed consultant. However in scenarios wherein the specification document is not available from customer, integrator should go ahead and prepare one for the customer. This shall help to agree and set right expectations that needs to be validated during project closure.

Specification Document should at-least include the following:

  1. Scope of Work
  2. Minimum Qualification of Managers, Engineer & Technicians working on the project.
  3. Submittals that has to developed and shared with customer during the course of project execution. This includes:
  4. List of Design Documents and Drawings.
  5. Material Approval Requests
  6. Material Samples
  7. Datasheets of products.
  8. Supplier and Manufacturer Details
  9. Method Statements detailing the installation process of each individual component
  • Design documents and drawings at different stages of the project for customer’s review and approval.

Generally no design could get completed in one go and it is always advisable for large projects that their design is broken into different phases as follows:

  1. Stage 1: 30 % Design Documents and Drawings.
  2. Stage 2: 60 % Design Documents and Drawings.
  3. Stage 3: 90 % Design Documents and Drawings.
  4. Stage 4: 100 % Design Document and Drawings

Once the Design reaches Stage 4 and is completely reviewed by customer or the customer appointed consultant, the physical installation of the equipment could begin.

  • Predictive Site Survey Design Documents.

Predictive site survey shall be performed that is modeling the facilities and RF environment in order to predict the WLAN requirements (access point types, location, channel utilization, signal to noise ratios, channel interference, etc.)

  • On-Site Site Survey Design Documents

The predictive site surveys being simulator based would aid only for the purposes of developing the initial BOQ. However this in no way are the substitute for actual onsite site survey with actual model of Wireless Access Points. On-Site site survey are all about mounting the specific models of Wireless Access Points with specific antennas on typical locations and then studying the resultant coverage pattern by tweaking in the Tx Power to develop the optimal AP placement with right model of Access Point / Antenna.

  • Post deployment site survey documents and drawings

Final site survey shall be performed after the WLAN system is online to compare the design and specification requirements with the actual performance values. This shall held the integrator’s responsibility to rectify any issues of non-compliance with the requirements.

  • Interface Control Documents

In large scale deployments, wireless will not be operational as a standalone system and needs to get integrated with different systems and subsystems. ICDs in such cases shall help us determine the validating parameters to conclude the integration is successful.

  • Installation, Operation and Maintenance manuals.

Operation and Maintenance Manuals shall help the customer once the project is handed over to maintain the deployment.

Developing the compliance matrix document

Compliance matrix summarizes compliance or non-compliance with each specification component.

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