Investigation of the Characteristics of Radio Signal Propagation in Indoor Environment

Abstract

The success of wireless local area networks (WLANs) has led to an intense interest among wireless engineers in understanding and predicting radio propagation characteristics within buildings. This paper present radio signal propagation measurement and modeling at 2.4GHz, within a building in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Benin. A base station built around SENAO access point, and a PA24 flat panel directional antenna of 19dBi gain and 17.50 beam-widths was setup for the experimentation. Signals were monitored from the fixed BS using LINKSYS, and NET STUMBLER version 4.0 software run on a Laptop. In this report, the effect of multi-path and delay spread was not considered. The result of the investigation revealed a significant attenuation of the radio signal within the small distance. A path loss exponent of 7.8 to 8.9 on the ground floor, and 2.9 to 5.2 for the 2nd floor were obtained for the period of investigation.