Designing buildings to support high capacity wireless networks

Summary form only given. The capacity of wireless networks operating within buildings is dependent upon both the radio infrastructure and the indoor propagation environment. This paper studies the effect of internal wall attenuation on the ability to reuse a radio channel within a building. A metric for channel reuse potential is introduced and used to identify wall attenuations that maximize channel use within a typical office building environment. The results of this study inform the design of wireless friendly buildings that employ electromagnetic shielding and/or frequency selective walls.