Optimising the location and power of wireless base stations within a dynamic indoor environment

The use of indoor wireless communication systems is continuously increasing while the main concern is how to provide nonstop high quality service. This requires positioning the base stations in a way that optimise the quality measures such as the path loss in addition to minimising the transmitted power in order to reduce the power consumption as well as the interference with neighbour base stations. This is further complicated by the dynamic nature of indoor environments, which are subject to continuous changes such as opening doors and windows and movement of people. In this work, the optimisation process was done in two steps: first the optimal position is found then the minimal emitted power is calculated for that optimal position. Ray tracing software is used to obtain the path loss needed to build a cost function for the optimisation process. The minimisation of this cost function then gives the optimal base stations' positions. The emitted power is then gradually decreased as long as the received field strength is above a threshold value above which proper communication is guaranteed. A system for monitoring path loss and responding to dynamic changes by altering the transmitter power is proposed.