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A Technical Report on
Wireless Site Survey
DE6499 Engineering Project (NZDE-
Electrical, Semester 2 2015)
Manukau
Institute of Technology
By
Siddharth Nannore
130009190
Supervised
By Hervé Carpentier
Abstract
This project is about
surveying the world of wireless and inspecting the various services such as
network coverage, strength, capability, throughput, obligations and much more
using specialized Software, named “Ekahau Site Survey” and dedicated hardware
for Active and Passive surveying.
A team of two students will
be deployed initially in the Faculty of Engineering and Trades Building and Library
at Manukau Institute of Technology, with all the required equipment to conduct
the survey and then moving on further to other buildings, because most of the
signal dropping and bad coverage issues are being reported by users of
following two buildings in past few weeks.
Every result including the
successful and failed surveys will be documented by following the proper
documentation guidelines, including the steps taken to eliminate the flaws in
the Final report with demonstration. Live updates are made available publicly
at www.mitengineering.blogspot.com,
featuring frequent updates on progress and outcomes until the completion of
project.
Project description
It’s been a long way human
civilization evolved technically from Transistors
and ENIAC to more complex Quantum computers. One of the most important
milestone in the journey is evolution of wireless technology. Wireless these
days is one of the most important mean of communication, and influences
everyone’s life on earth in direct or indirect ways.
For instance if someone is
speaking to their loved ones over a cellular phone call, there’s a lightning
fast exchange (both sending and receiving) of Wireless Signals enabling them to
convey their thoughts in real time; or weather while unlocking a car, which
looks as simple as pressing a button on the key, is based on wireless
technology. Wireless is everywhere these days, conveying important,
confidential, scrambled data within the web of crusts and troughs at a wide
band of various frequencies.
But keeping the wireless
network alive is also a big challenge because of the variations in client
volume and usage type. As people, these days, are frequently switching to
portable devices rather than old wired ones, and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device),
introducing new challenges to the IT Administrators by adding unexpected volume
of users and traffic. Unlike every other machinery, even wireless networks
needs proper maintenance and preventative measures for providing best service
to the clients and keep the Network stable at peak usage times. Even a minor
change in the furnishing/arrangement of room may bring big difference in
network quality and capability. Wireless signals can penetrate and absorbed by
every object that comes in its way, therefore the rate of signal absorption by
a specific material is a major point brought into consideration while placing
the Access Points to cover a certain area.
System description
The Wireless services
inside the Buildings discussed above are usually very busy from morning 7:00AM
until 8:00PM in the evening and therefore there’s no chance of errors while
surveying.
A single internal router would have
too much load on it, if it was to be the only access point in an entire
building, plus the signal strength would decay as going away from the room
where the router is placed, leaving the corner ends totally unreachable (to
provide the network) that’s where Access Points comes in, as it is connected to
the main router via cables and can be placed in rooms or specific places to
cover the whole building providing excellent signal strength and bandwidth with
no excess load over the central system. But one should know the exact point to
install the AP so that it doesn’t waste the resources by placing two APs close
to each other or leave a black hole where the network could not be accessed
wirelessly due to placement of two APs, too far away.
It is the job of manual
calculations based upon type and made of Access point being used, frequency, dimensions
of each and every room in the building, number of floors, material used in
construction of building to determine the position where the APs are to be
placed, but this is practically a hard, time consuming and prone to error task.
Therefore specialized surveying software are used to achieve these goals which
makes this job too easy for the administrators. There are various programs
available in the market for the same application such as AirMangnet Survey,
NetSpot etc. but Ekahau Site Survey dominates almost all of it in several
criteria, for example:
·
ESS supports Online Maps
integration which facilitates Administrator to make changes based upon real
time changes in Network Requirements.
·
It can automatically (Based on area to be
covered and Access Point used) place the APs at exact location to meet the
requirements of the building or area.
·
ESS enables for Administrator to auto
configure APs locations by enabling Administrator to import Building Maps in
various formats such as .jpg, .jpeg, .PNG, CAD files and much more.
·
It builds the real time network
heat-maps when the Administrator moves throughout the building and scanning all
areas and corners using GPS for coverage black holes.
·
It scans almost all properties of
wireless including vulnerabilities, providing suggestions and analysing the
impact of material’s signal absorption rate.
Technical details and
requirements
Below is the List
of Resources required:
A. Financial Resources
To make
resources available, based upon the size of the project which in this case is a
small project, an estimate of $20,000 (NZ Currency) is considered sufficient
for effective results with quality output.
B. Human Resources
Surveying
a Building is not a task for single person, as there must me someone taking
notes of the results for later analysing and documentation, therefore at least
a team of two is deployed in our senerio to conduct the survey and for
efficient and accurate outputs.Also, project Supervisor must continously
monitor the actions and provide suggestions for overall quality output.
C. Educational Resources
A
reference guide for this project being used is ”Manukau Institute of Technology
CCNA 3 Wireless Chapter Slides” for basic wireless properties and to learn more
about wireless protocols, also Ekahau website and Ekahau youtube is too handy
to learn more about the company and products they manufacture, proper operating
tips and guidence, webinars, demonstrations to conduct the survey efficiently. Lastly
but not the least, Paulo (ICTS MIT) has helped us a lot by providing us the
full version slides highlighting ESS features and qualities over other similar
vendors, as well as other achivements about the Company, Business Associates
and Customers etc.
D. Physical Resources
A number of physical Resources are required at various phases of the
Project
i.
A
Macbook Pro
·
Technical
Specifications (Apple Inc., 2015)
o
Processor
: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.26GHz
o
Display : 13.3 inch
o
Storage : 160GB SSD
o
RAM : 2048 MB
o
OS
: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
o
NIC : Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Supported Wireless Adapter
ii.
Ekahau
Site Survey Tool (Ekahau, 2014)
·
Minimum
System Requirements
o
Windows
7/8 PC (ESS Supports both x64 and x86 Architecture)
o
2048
MB RAM
o
1 GB
free HDD Space
o
1024 x 768 Screen Resolution ( minumum 32bit
color depth)
o
External
Wifi Adapter Support (Must Have)
E. Emotional Resources
Students are requited to be
highly motivared and active during the entire project cycle, therefore a Frequent
meeting is necessary with the Supervisor to encouragement and motivating them.
This will minimise the posibilty of occourence of errors while performing the
tasks.
Timeline and Budget
As the project is being deployed on small scale, a sum
of NZD 20000 is expected to be the total cost of the project based on cost of
the required tools, equipment and reserve funds for moving or replacing APs if
needed.
The
required resources and costs based on market price are as follows:
|
Product
|
Cost in (New Zealand Currency)
|
Number of Items
|
Remark
|
|
MacBook Pro
|
$1600
|
2
|
|
|
Ekahau Site Survey tool
|
$1500
|
1
|
|
|
Safety Equipment
|
$500
|
For 2 Employees
|
|
|
Cost to reinstall APs
|
$4000
|
Max 3 Buildings
|
Estimated
cost for each Building (From Reserve)
|
|
Risk Management
|
$3000
|
|
In case
of equipment failure or accident
|
|
Total
|
$20000
|
|
|
Table 1: Project Cost Distribution
Below
is the Gantt chart representing the Project timeline based on task duration and
their start date (week).
Note: The Shaded region represents tasks to be
completed.
|
ACTIVITY
|
Start Date (weeks)
|
Duration (in weeks)
|
% completed
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
|
Introduction and briefing
|
1
|
1
|
100%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Scope discussion
|
2
|
2
|
100%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Meeting ICTS Engineer
|
4
|
1
|
100%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Researching planning Scheme
|
4
|
3
|
100%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Preplanning report
|
6
|
2
|
100%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Surveying the buildings
|
8
|
3
|
0%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Meeting with Supervisor
|
10
|
1
|
0%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Planning and executing changes
|
10
|
1
|
0%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Finalizing and verifying
|
11
|
1
|
0%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Generating final report
|
12
|
1
|
0%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Demonstrating Project
|
13
|
1
|
0%
|
||||||||||||||
|
Project closure
|
14
|
0
|
0%
|
Table 2: Timeline Gantt chart
|
Figure 1 Visual Representation of Resources and Hours worked
|
Figure 2: Progressive flowchart representing Project Phases
Conclusions
This report illustrates the
new obstacles in front of IT Administrators to qualify for the new market needs
and to satisfy client needs by providing them secure, reachable, top quality wireless
network services. Also it shows, how ESS can prove to be very useful tool for
any administrator to save lot of time and reduce their workload by calculating
exact APs location based upon rate of signal absorption by different materials,
overlapping Access Point coverage areas to enable switch between one AP to
another without dropping connection and lot more other factors, helping them
visualize their targets and achieve desired goals based upon the
infrastructural needs.
Glossary
Transistors (Transistor - Wikipedia, 2015)
A transistor is a
semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and
electrical power. It is composed of semiconductor material with at least three
terminals for connection to an external circuit.
ENIAC (When was the
first computer Invented, 2015)
ENIAC
stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer is said to be the first
fully functional computer built on October 19, 1943 and completed in 1946 by J.
Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at university of Pennsylvania occupying about
1800 square feet of space and 18000 Vacuum Tubes weighting 50 tonnes.
Quantum computers (Systems, 2015)
Rather
than store information as 0s and 1s as normal computers do, a quantum computer
uses a qubits, which can be a 1 or a 0 or both at the same time. This “quantum
superposition”, along with the quantum effects of entanglement and quantum
tunnelling, enable quantum computers to consider and manipulate all
combinations of buts simultaneously, making quantum computation fast.
References
Apple Inc. (2015). MacBook Pro
Technical Specifications. Retrieved from Apple:
http://www.apple.com/nz/macbook-pro/specs/
Ekahau. (2014). Installation Ekahau
Wi-fi Design Documentation . Retrieved from Ekahau Site Survey :
http://docs.ekahau.com/index.php/Installation
Systems, D.-W. (2015). Quantum
Computing. Retrieved from D-Wave Systems:
http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum-computing
Transistor - Wikipedia. (2015). Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
When was the first computer Invented. (2015). Retrieved from Computerhope.com:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm
