The Impact of Structural Shielding on the Performance of Wireless Systems in a Single-Floor Office Building

Cochannel interference in indoor wireless communication systems can severely limit system capacity and performance. To reduce cochannel interference in indoor environments, electromagnetic shielding can be used to increase the radio isolation between physically adjacent systems. In this paper, the impact of structural (wall) shielding on the system performance of an interference-limited CDMA system is examined using a ray-tracing propagation model. A logarithmic relationship is observed between the average outage probability and the extent of shielding in a typical single-floor office environment. With an efficient deployment of shielding, the results obtained suggest that both the capacity and signal quality of a wireless system can be enhanced as the number of base stations increases. By incorporating shielding into the architecture of a building, wireless-friendly environments that facilitate better use of the available radio spectrum might be realized