Best Practices - Antenna Placement

[Chris Pohlad-Thomas]

We have 3 3602Es connected to a 2504 WLC. I was wondering if anyone has advice or a site they can send me with best practices for antenna placement. They are all mounted on the side of a wall, near the ceiling (above everyone's head).

Thanks!          

[George Stefanick]

What model antennas ?

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

[Chris Pohlad-Thomas]

According to one of the ziplocs it looks like they are:

AIR-ANT2524DW-R

[George Stefanick]

Chris,

Stepping back to RF fundamentals, it tells us dipoles are like circle donuts see the attached. So depending how you arrange the antenna placement you will favor one side or the other.

Case in point if they are installed on the side wall and pointing hoizontaly  then you can see you are wasting part of your coverage above and below and not some much left or right.

Cisco recommends dipoles be installed vertically often to ceiling tile for optimal performance.

Hope this helps

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"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin
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‎"I'm in a serious relationship with my Wi-Fi. You could say we have a connection."

[Chris Pohlad-Thomas]

As a matter of fact, I think we do have the antennas parallel to the ground. So, how does one determine which sides of the antenna the radiation is emitted from? Is it from either flat side?

[Stephen Rodriguez]

Honestly it doesn't really matter.  If you have the antenna Vertically the energy is going to spread out.  But yes it should be from the flatter sides.

HTH,
Steve

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[Scott Fella]

Flat side or pointed side does not matter.... the radiation pattern will be as what George has shown above.

Thanks,

Scott

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[Chris Pohlad-Thomas]

I guess my other question is, what is the determining factor of which side of the axis that the signal is radiated to? This may sound dumb, but for example looking at the image above, we can see the radiated pattern is both above and below the axis, but what about coming towards you (if you were looking at the antenna) or radiating away from you from the antenna?

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

Take a donut and put the antenna through the hole in the middle... its like that.  So you will get more vertical coverage than horizontal if the antenna is parallel to the ground.

Thanks,

Scott

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[George Stefanick]

To add to Scotts comment. The HIGHER dBi the antenna the more longated the coverage becomes.

__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin
__________________________________________________________________________________________
‎"I'm in a serious relationship with my Wi-Fi. You could say we have a connection."

[Chris Pohlad-Thomas]

Wow, that is probably one of the easiest to understand answers yet. So if the antenna is perpendicular to the floor and the AP is flat against the wall then theoretically you are only losing maybe 25% of your power to the wall behind the AP. With it parallel you are losing probably 50%.