Large-scale wireless LAN design

The design of a large-scale wireless LAN poses a number of interesting questions. Building the Wireless Andrew network at Carnegie Mellon University has given us the opportunity to deal with these questions. This article describes the approaches we have developed for the design of similar networks. A large-scale wireless LAN must be designed so that all of the target space has radio coverage (i.e., there are no coverage gaps). It must also be designed so that its capacity is adequate to carry the expected load. These requirements generally can be met by using the proper combination of access point locations, frequency assignments, and receiver threshold settings.