Installation guide

54
Wi-Fi Location-Based Services—Design and Deployment Considerations
OL-11612-01
Deployment Best Practices
Figure 33 Displaying Detected RSSI via the GUI
Access Point Placement Considerations
Proper placement and density of access points is critical to achieving the quoted performance of the
Cisco location tracking solution. In many office wireless LANs, access points are distributed throughout
interior spaces, providing service to the surrounding work areas. These locations are usually selected on
the basis of coverage, WLAN bandwidth, channel re-use, cell-to-cell overlap, security, aesthetics, and
deployment feasibility. In a location-aware WLAN design, it is good practice to ensure that access points
are not solely clustered toward the center of a floor or building. Rather, access points located towards
the center of the floor should be complemented by access points located near the perimeter, providing a
design that ensures the areas to be localized are encircled by access points (Figure 34). This is especially
important if accurate localization is desired for mobile devices that are at or near the edges of the
environment.
Care should be taken to avoid simply deploying access points in a simple straight line manner throughout
the target environment. Rather, deployment in corridors or other areas that are long and straight should
be done in a staggered fashion, as indicated in Figure 34. Deploying the superset of interior and
perimeter access points in a staggered fashion is very useful in attaining the necessary RSSI
differentiation necessary to achieve good location fidelity.