A large-scale numerical simulation of indoor radio wave propagation for a wireless LAN system

Recently, a high-power wireless LAN access point (AP) based on IEEE802.11n/ac standard with a high-speed data transmission rate has been developed. Using this AP makes it possible to build easily wireless networks including a few floors in the adjacent as well as many rooms in a floor. This paper discusses indoor propagation characteristics including received signal strength indicators (RSSI) and propagation channel in a whole office floor based on a large-scale numerical electromagnetic simulations employing the FDTD technique. A precise numerical model with the spatial resolution of 5 mm is developed for the numerical simulation at the frequency of 5 GHz. The calculation are carried out by using the high-performance and high-capacity computer system, HITACHI SR16000 model Ml. As a result, we confirm the validity of numerical simulation related to RSSI and channel modeling. The manner is useful to decide the number of access points as well as their locations for designing wireless networks.