SBIR-STTR Award

There is significant interest in WLAN technology since it overcomes many limitations of wired LANs and can be deployed in military facilities and environments relatively quickly. Many challenges are encountered when planning a WLAN deployment and ensuring that mission critical networked applications are optimized to achieve adequate service levels. Currently, no single suite of COTS products can be used to plan and design an optimized WLAN for the special requirements and applications of the DoD. There is a crucial need for a comprehensive, affordable WLAN deployment planner that integrates the attributes of typical WLAN design software with the attributes of technologically sophisticated software for planning, analyzing and optimizing communications networks and networked applications. The WLAN planning software envisaged integrates these important attributes to produce a product that will facilitate WLAN trade-off analysis (coverage, bandwidth), reduce infrastructure and operational costs (equipment, cabling, installation), optimize network and application performance, and satisfy network security requirements. The R&D will result in a comprehensive solution for designing, simulating (both at the physical and network level), measuring, and maintaining any form of wireless LAN. Such a system does not exist today, and will be of immense value to the Department of Defense and commercial enterprise customers. The WLAN design software that results from this project will create a seamless operating environment, whereby a designer has the ability to analyze or monitor any aspect of the wireless network to whatever level of detail is desired. With the overlay of a user-friendly interface, a fully standalone product emerges that can be marketed and licensed. The final software product will be personal computer (PC) based and modular in form, with software components that can be individually included or excluded from any given license on the basis of user requirements

OPNET Technologies, Inc. (OPNET) and its subcontractor Wireless Valley, Inc. provide products that possess strong off-the-shelf capabilities for WLAN network simulation and propagation modeling, respectively. During Phase I of this SBIR program, two key objectives were realized: (i) the development of an automatic design capability to optimize placement of access points (APs) for a given WLAN deployment site plan; and (ii) development of an import and export capability to exchange data between OPNET and Wireless Valley products to demonstrate interoperability, product-line integration, and seamless workflow. In Phase II, the working prototype delivered in Phase I will be developed into a complete solution for WLAN design with a rich set of input parameters, optimization algorithms, propagation modeling, and network simulation capabilities. The design input data will include site plans, user density, usage profiles describing applications, service level information such acceptable response time and throughput, cost constraints, and security requirements. Optimization algorithms will be researched and developed to account for throughput requirements, network security, redundancy, and survivability. Propagation and network performance modeling will be provided by means of multi-path ray tracing algorithms and detailed discrete event simulations. In addition, the two disparate product lines from OPNET and Wireless Valley will be fully integrated to provide a WLAN design tool with a seamless workflow and a simple to use graphical user interface.

Keywords:
WLAN DESIGN PLANNING MODELING SIMULATION WLAN AP OPTIMIZATION WLAN PROPAGATION ANALYSIS WLAN MULTI-PATH ANALYSIS