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When a WLAN for a multi-floor building is being designed, the
virtual model must take into consideration signal “leak” from the
adjacent floors. This is important for two reasons. First, it is a
common practice to provide connectivity to the adjacent floor by
means of the APs that are deployed one floor below or above
(usually below, because APs are typically placed on the ceiling,
and, therefore, are closer to the floor located above.) Second, if
providing connectivity by this method is not planned, it is
important to make sure that the signal that penetrates the floors
does not cause interference. With TamoGraph, you can create and
analyze multi-floor models as explained below.
Creating a Multi-floor Project
To create a multi-floor project, you should first follow the steps
that you follow when you create a standard project; you must add a
floor plan to the project and calibrate it. You can begin with the
first floor. Once the standard project with a single floor plan has
been created, you can use the
Plans and
Surveys
tab on the right panel to manage floors and define their
characteristics. Click
Add => Floor
to create a new floor level and then drag your first floor plan to
the newly created floor item. After that you can click
Add => Floor
again to create a new floor level. If the floor plans are identical
for all the floors in your model, you can duplicate floors after
drawing walls and other obstructions on the first floor plan and
placing alignment points; this is described in detail below. If the
floors are not identical, you should add individual floor plans
images in one of the supported graphic formats for every floor by
selecting the corresponding floor and using the
Add => Plan…
command. New floor plans must then be
calibrated.
Note that for each floor, you can add multiple floor plans that
might have different scale and orientation.
Once the floors have been created and the corresponding floor plans
have been added and calibrated, you should specify floor heights
and a few other characteristics. New floors are added with default
floor materials and heights; to specify correct values for your
building, right-click on any of the floor items and select
Properties
or click on the
Floor Manager
button. You can also use this dialog to rearrange
floors.
When the floor properties have been defined, you should take care
of floor plan alignment as explained below.
Aligning Floors
When you work with a multi-floor site model, TamoGraph can analyze
Wi-Fi signals that come from the adjacent floors. To be able to
take advantage of this functionality, you need to perform floor
alignment. Floor plan alignment is necessary because floor plans
might have different scale, orientation, or offset. While floor
alignment is not mandatory, TamoGraph will use only the data from
the current floor unless you perform floor alignment. To perform
it, please do the following:
-
Right-click on the first floor plan and select Align Floor
Plan.
-
Choose a few locations on the floor plan that will be easily
identifiable on the plans of other floors. This could be elevator
shaft corners, building corners, staircase corners, or anything
else that you can easily find on all the floor plans that you use
in the project.
-
Click Add point to place a new marker on the floor plan, and
then move the marker to one of these locations. Create at least two
markers. Each marker is assigned a unique number. If you made a
mistake, click Delete point or Clear all.
-
Once you have placed two or more alignment markers, click
Apply.
-
Repeat this operation for all the floor plans that you would like
to have aligned. The markers must be positioned exactly below or
above the corresponding markers on the adjacent floor. For example,
if marker #2 on the 5th floor is placed in the bottom right corner
of the building, marker #2 must be also placed in the bottom right
corner of the building on the floor plan of the 6th floor.
To check the current floor alignment status, select
Properties
or click on the
Floor Manager
button. The floors that are properly aligned are marked with a
green checkbox. The floors that have not been aligned yet are
marked with a yellow exclamation mark. Just like map calibration,
floor alignment must be done only once.
Floor Duplication
If the floor plans are identical for some or all the floors in your
model, you can simply right-click on the first floor and
select
Duplicate Floor
to create a copy of the first floor with exactly the same floor
plan. If the walls and other obstructions, their placement, and
materials are identical for all floors, you can calibrate a single
floor plan, draw walls, perform floor alignment as described above,
and then use the
Duplicate Floor
command; that way, you will not need to recreate the same virtual
floor model for every floor or align the floors, because
duplication includes the walls and alignment points.
Dealing with Complex Floor Structures
When you use a floor manager to specify the materials that separate
floors, you assume that each floor is a contiguous piece of
material that covers the entire floor plan area. However, there are
cases that are more complex. For example, one can find buildings
that have “holes” in the floors that span one or several stories.
To deal with such virtual models, you should use the “Floor Area”
drawing tool; it is grouped together with attenuation zones and can
be found in the corresponding drop-down list on the RF Planner
toolbar, next to the “Elevator shaft” or “Filing cabinet” items.
Floor areas are drawn just like other attenuation zones,
using
Rectangle
or
Polygon
mode.
As soon as you have drawn the first floor area on a given floor,
the application will assume that the floor has a non-standard
geometry and only those areas that are covered with “Floor area”
contain floor material; areas that are not covered are considered
free from any obstructions.
To avoid unnecessary clutter, floor areas are hidden by default.
Their visibility can be turned on and off in the
View => Virtual Objects => Floor Areas
menu. We recommend hiding floor areas once you have completed the
design of your virtual model. Additionally, for the sake of
clarity, it should be mentioned that when you edit floor areas, you
are editing the floor below your feet, not above your head. It
should also be mentioned that the floor material and its properties
are configured on the
Floor Manager,
as discussed in the previous chapters.
Analyzing Data
Data analysis for multi-floor sites is similar to data analysis
methods for single-floor predictive models; they are described in
the
Applying
Visualizations
chapter. However, there are some peculiarities that should be
noted. In addition to the signals from the APs located on the floor
being analyzed, TamoGraph will also analyze the signals that
penetrate from the APs located on the adjacent floors, taking into
account their position, height above the floor, and the material of
the ceilings. The APs located on the adjacent floors are displayed
on the AP list (the left pane of the main TamoGraph window), but
the names of such APs are shown using a pale blue font color. This
allows you to identify the APs that do not belong to the current
floor. Note that you cannot change the properties of such APs or
delete them. If you want to change properties of an AP or delete
it, first select the floor to which it belongs using the
Plans and Surveys
tab.
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