Hierarchic optimization for indoor application

Recently there is a growing interest in providing and improving radio coverage for mobile phones and WLANs inside buildings. The need of such coverage appears mainly in office buildings, shopping malls, train stations where the subscriber density is very high. The cost of cellular systems and also the one of indoor wireless systems depend highly on the number of base stations required to achieve the desired coverage for a given level of field strength. This paper presents an approach in optimizing the indoor radio coverage using multiple access points for indoor environments. The genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) are used to determine the optimal access point positions to achieve optimum coverage. Next a hierarchic optimization method is introduced and finally comparisons are made for the methods suggested.