As we have seen in the previous sections, different propagation effects and equipment characteristics will impact the performance of a wireless LAN, hence the size and shape of the coverage area. We can group these parameters in three categories:
- Access Point :
transmitted power
receive sensitivity (for client to AP transmissions)
antenna used (plus cable/connector losses if external antennas are used)
- Environment:
Physical environment: physical obstacles to the radio wave propagation
See AlsoTutorials | T-Mobile SupportPhysical environment: distance between the transmitter and the receiver
Radio environment: interferences from other access points/clients on your own network or from neighboring network
Radio environment: radio interferences from non 802.11 sources
- Client:
transmitted power (when the client is transmitting)
sensitivity (for AP to client transmissions)
antenna used
orientation of the client's antenna relative to the Ap's antenna
Please note is that the performance of a wireless network will not only depend on the quality of the access point but also on the quality of the wireless clients. A given access point may have a good performance when used with high quality wireless clients. The exact same access point in the same environment may exhibit a lower performance when different clients are used. The higher the sensitivity and the antenna gain, the better. For instance most USB client sticks have a poor antenna (because the antenna must fit on the USB stick) when compared to laptops with embedded antenna, mounted in the LCD screen.
