Access Point for frozen storeroom

[Marcel Tempelman]

Hi all,

I was going through the Cisco access point portfolio looking for the most suitable access point in a cold (-26C) environment. The building is a warehouse with frozen stuff, about 15m high (45') There a are a few options:

1. Indoor AP in a special enclosure withe an external antenna

2. Outdoor AP (internal antenna and / or with external antenna)

3. Industrial AP

Option 1 is limited to 6dBm gain antennas unless you use the 3800P.

Option 2 has a problem with the limited use of the 5ghz band (ETSI domain). It's DFS channels or nothing

Option 3 is probably the best option but is based on old tech (wave 1 ac) and expensive

I really like the radio patterns of the 1500-series, they are great for covering the area between racks (the 1560 has a strong internal antenna with a reasonably small beam) but the DFS-only part worries me. The standard AP's are limited to 6dBm gain antennas so these might not be suitable to be used ceiling mounted or at the end of an aisle.

What are your thoughts ?

with kind regards,

Marcel Tempelman.

What are you thoughts ?

[Haydn Andrews]

Done a few of these. I place the AP outside of the freezer with the antenna inside the freezer.

If the AP is going to be inside the freezer you are going to need a heated NEMA enclosure and that will cost a bit.

[Marcel Tempelman]

These are warehouse size freezers so the APs must be installed inside. We have one customer who has a DIY-solution: they bought 2702e APs and put them in a IP65 box. Added some temperature sensors and measured the temperature. They discovered if they wrapped the 2702e in isolation material that they could keep the AP at -17C (spec is -20C) so they stayed within the specs. These APs have been running for a couple of years now.

[Leo Laohoo]

-26C? 1560 is suitable.
Make sure to check the PoE requirement. 1562I, for example, requires >30w PoE. 1562E can work with 30w PoE.
In regards to DFS, can radar penetrate into the freezer? If not, then don't worry about it.

[Marcel Tempelman]

It's pretty hard to get any signal out of a freezer so I guess radar will not get in. You're right about that.

Just looked at the datasheet and when using POE+ instead of UPOE, the AP loses one spatial stream (2x2 vs 3x3). Don't see that as an isue because capacity and throughput are not numer one priorities. Thanks for pointing me to that information.

If We're going to use the 1560 I think we end up using the 1562D (warehouse ceiling) and 1562E with a directional antenna (2588P3M, freezer).