Placing base stations in wireless indoor communication networks

More and more mobile communications comes to company sites through local (typically indoor) wireless communication networks. However, planning wireless networks is quite different from planning traditional wire-based networks. Planning must take into account the specifics of radiowave propagation at the installation site. Current systems are cellular in that a base station (i.e. a sender or transmitter) controls the links to the transceivers. Buildings require multicellular systems because walls and floors absorb part of the radio signal. Today, an experienced salesperson estimates the number and positioning of base stations. To help the salesperson, Siemens has compiled a set of guidelines based on typical scenarios. However, a scenario might not always apply, and the approach does not handle positioning the base stations well. Computer-aided planning can help ease the difficulties of planning. Toward that end, we have developed Popular (Planning Of PicocellULAr Radio). The Popular prototype lets users compute the minimal number of base stations and their location, given a blueprint of the installation site and information about the wall and ceiling materials.