Introduction

The design of your wireless system encompasses three specific stages or phases: planning, designing, and site surveying. In addition to these phases, you must combine a certain amount of knowledge, creativity, and skill to overcome design obstacles. You must have knowledge and understanding of your organization's requirements for an implementation, infrastructure, wireless technology, and environment. You will also need creativity to overcome business, political, and physical barriers. Finally, you need skill to properly test and deploy your wireless design. This chapter provides you with the information necessary to execute the different phases of a wireless network design, raise awareness of the various obstacles you may encounter throughout all stages of your design effort, and provide examples of designs for common scenarios.

The first phase in your wireless design is the planning phase. This phase represents the initial possibilities of a wireless solution for a given business issue or scenario. Wireless system feasibility testing begins in this phase and will continue throughout all stages of your design.

Next, in the rough design phase you must apply the knowledge gained in the planning stage to create a "blind" design. A blind design is your initial, untested wireless system design. You will use the information gathered in the planning stage to apply to this rough design.

The third and final phase is the preparation and execution of a wireless site survey. This phase allows you to eliminate any remaining variables in your design, permits you to test the feasibility...