Batboard

Hi everyone; I've been enlisted to provide a customer with a report of their in-building radio coverage. First some background information.

They are on a 900MHz simplex frequency using a mix of MTX9250 and GTX portables. Radios have a mix of long and stubby antennas in use. The building is a 3-storey commerical office space with a mechanical penthouse, warehouse storage, and parking garage (at grade level). Currently there are a number of known as well as un-known dead spots.

They are looking to get a report of just where these dead spots are so they have something on paper. The radios are used by security and building maintenance. They don't want anything super formal or technical, I was thinking of making a copy of the floor plans and use different colours to represent signal strength on a scale of 0-5 (0 being none, 5 being 100%) using black,red,orange,yellow,green.

Anybody have any suggestions? As I said, they aren't looking for anything as complex or technical as mV/m or anything like that, just to have a good idea where the radios work and where they don't. Part 2 of this project is to get everyone switched over to a long antenna and a decent mobile setup at reception/security but before they do that, we'd like to get an idea of what the situation is there now.

Your about to take on a project that could get out of hand real fast.
You would do good if you had a radio with some sort of indicator
of signal strength. Mount it on a cart so the height doesn't
change. This provides a fixed point of refference that won't
change.

Roll the cart around the building and record your signal strength.
remember that this should be done on a 2 way bassis. You may
find locations where it is good in one dorection and not the other.

Make a recording on a report form by location and signal. Bear
in mind that moving the radio just a few inches may make a
big change in signal strength.

have fun in you effort.

Jim

Sounds like a decent plan, but I wouldn't bother with the rainbow (I'm lazy). Since all it seems they are looking for is a basic idea of where the dead spots are, I'd give them the traffic light. Green=good, Yellow=poor, Red=nothing.

When you do the consolette install, can you remote it, allowing the antenna to be placed in an advantageous location? That way, even if you can't always talk portable to portable, you should be able to talk portable to consolette.

You don't mention the size of the building (other than 3 stories), but I would think a consolette should suffice to cover the space. The issue obviously will be whether there are problems getting the portables to hit the consolette's antenna with enough signal strength. At least you are using 900MHz in-building, and not LB

You are going to have real difficulties doing this on a simplex axtatem where users are portable. While one user may be able to hear another, it is dependent on the location of both portables not just one. This would be much easier to do on a system with a fixed control point as you refer to with the possibility of adding a consolete.

Remember the location of the portable at the security station can effect your results heatlt as well as it's proximity to other rf sources.

You are up for a difficult task.

Also, have you been their equipment provider? You could be opening yourself up to som liability by saying that the radio will work in a certain location. What if there is some sort of emergency and is does not work where you stayed it will work from. You need to be very careful in how you supply this information and need to add a bunch of legal mumbo to protect yourself.

My suggestion, leave this alone and refer them to another type of source to complete this kind of study for them to help from painting yourself into a corner with it!