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How wireless recon works
Highly mobile and lightweight, SiteScout is more than a cart—it’s a wireless analysis and visualization engine, an intelligent tool that works in tandem with proprietary SiteSense software, a laptop computer, and a standard LAN card to provide a remarkably accurate picture of your facility’s current network, and what it would look like as an optimized network. This is what we call “Engineering Wireless LANs.”
SiteScout automatically and continuously collects real wireless measurements with precise position location. It uses this data to model the RF behavior in your facility with extraordinary accuracy—even without building drawings. SiteScout not only enables collection of precise location information during the site survey, but also relieves the user from carrying a laptop.
SiteSense software resides in a laptop computer that is rolled on the specially designed SiteScout cart through the desired coverage areas of a building or outside area. The wheels of SiteScout measure distance and direction as the radio card (Wi-Fi) in the laptop measures signal strength from all AP units within range. This location and signal strength data is compiled into a color-coded coverage map that makes it possible to look at signal strengths for each AP unit or groups of units.
SiteSense software reads this information along with wireless measurements to develop precise 802.11 a/b/g wireless LAN coverage maps. SiteSense further leverages this rich data to understand and analyze the RF behavior inside a facility with the highest degree of accuracy in the industry. The SiteSense software then compiles a color-coded coverage map that depicts relative signal strength for all AP units. Using the SiteSense special “drag and drop” feature, the operator can relocate AP units “virtually” in order to achieve optimal signal strength, replacing the need to relocate units on a “trial and error” basis. The final step is using SiteScout and SiteSense to maximize frequency channel assignments for all AP units—a daunting exercise if done manually.
Once an optimal layout is created, you can actually move the affected AP units and then recreate the coverage map to document the results. The final step is to ask the SiteSense software to maximize the frequency channel assignments for all AP units, which can be a daunting exercise if done manually.
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