3D Wi-Fi Network Planning

Plan for Coverage & Capacity
Ekahau Pro is a site survey tool that shows you where to place and how to configure your access points. It also accurately predicts network coverage, performance and capacity – in 3D. But wait, there’s more! Ekahau Pro includes built-in design profiles to meet commonly used guidelines from Cisco, Aruba, Polycom, Skype, Vocera and other vendors, making your job easier.

3D Modelling in Minutes
- Ultra-fast and accurate 3D propagation engine
- Multi-floor, multi-building, outdoor planning  
- Wall materials, wall height
- Convert CAD drawings into walls
- Antenna direction, uptilt, downtilt
- Outdoor planning for urban areas

Automatic AP Placement
- Manual one-click AP placement option
- Easy-to-interpret heatmaps
- Supports 2500+ Wi-Fi access points and antennas
- Expansion planning combines measurements & simulation
- Automatic and accurate AP placement & channel assignment based on coverage and capacity requirements as well as surroundings including rogue and neighbouring APs

Hybrid Site Surveys

Site Surveys: Passive, Active, Throughput, Spectrum
One site survey walk-through is enough to collect it all: Active survey (end-to-end or throughput), passive survey, and spectrum survey information. No pre-configuration is needed – just start surveying.

Ekahau highly recommends Ekahau Sidekick® for the quickest, most accurate and reliable site surveys, and simultaneous spectrum analysis.

 - Simultaneous 2.4 and 5GHz and 6GH surveys
- Throughput (iPerf) support
- Multi-adapter support
- GPS enabled outdoor surveys
- Touch screen optimized surveying
- Locates all APs
- Fills in the gaps to places you didn’t visit
- Automatic channel optimization
- Supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax
- See below for analysis features
- Simultaneous passive, active & spectrum surveys

Network Analysis, Optimization & Simulation

Heatmaps
Analyze collected data using one of 15 heatmaps to quickly determine the performance of the Wi-Fi network.

- Signal strength coverage
- Signal-to-noise ratio
- Data rate
- Throughput
- Packet loss
- Jitter
- Round-trip times
- Maximum Channel Bandwidth
- Number of access points (overlap)
- Network capacity problems
- Spectrum Channel Power
- Spectrum Utilization
- Wi-Fi channel width
- Co-channel / adjacent channel interference
- Capacity issues, such as excessive VoIP calls per radio, AP overload, …

Analysis Features
- Customizable requirements
- Customizable requirement profiles
- Locate all access points
- Visualize measured/simulated/both
- Visualize data for all or selected surveys
- Analyze for all APs, per SSID, channel or AP
- Built-in requirements for VoIP, RTLS, video…
- Simulate how the network will perform using different Wi-Fi devices
- Survey Inspector: detailed, combined Wi-Fi and spectrum analysis

.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting: See & Solve Wi-Fi Problems
Ekahau Pro allows visual map-based analysis, as well as powerful live troubleshooting.

The Real-Time Frequency Monitor brings on-the-spot troubleshooting to a new level by combining spectrum and Wi-Fi data into one comprehensive, easy-to-read screen. Survey Inspector does the same for post-survey analysis.

The Network Issues view summarizes the Wi-Fi network condition; it shows why your network fails and where.

Channel Planner optimizes the channels in your network.

Resolve:

- Coverage holes
- Throughput problems
- VoIP issues (jitter, packet loss, …)
- Insufficient Wi-Fi capacity
- Excessive VoIP traffic or AP overload
- Sub-optimal channel assignments
- Rogue access points
- Misconfigured access points
- Missing security settings
- Excessive number of stations per AP
- Excessive interference (Wi-Fi and non-Wi-Fi)
- Excessive load on a given channel

Reporting

Fully Customizable Reports
The Ekahau Pro site survey tool creates a summarized report of the bill of materials, coverage and performance maps, capacity information, and the entire network layout.

With a single click of a button, the entire multi-floor, even multi-building site will be completely covered in a detailed report.

There’s two ways to report: Select template from the application, or create your own based on your corporate reporting template.

- Selectable contents
- Template-based option for full customization
- List of access points and antennas
- AP configurations
- Coverage and performance heatmaps
- Network requirements
- Network health and issues
- 2.4 & 5GHz separately
- Per-AP coverage & SNR
- Capacity requirements and bottlenecks
- Surveyed areas
- Installation notes
- Detailed Real-Time Location System (RTLS) performance metrics
- Microsoft Word and PDF formats

Capacity Planning & Analysis

Capacity is the New Coverage
Don’t just think coverage, think capacity, too. The Ekahau Pro Auto-Planner designs the network according to your capacity requirements and also shows overloaded APs and areas of excessive voice calls.

Capacity Configuration
- Indicate network coverage areas
- Define your Wi-Fi clients
- Define applications run on the clients
- Prepare for network traffic peaks
- Configurable throughput surveys

Planning and Analysis
- Capacity Distribution: ensure even distribution of traffic per AP
- Simulate the impact of Wi-Fi equipment upgrades
- Capacity Health: show capacity problems
- Design a network based on capacity
- Throughput heatmaps (surveyed and calculated)

Full Support for 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6)

802.11ax increases Wi-Fi capacity – and complexity. Ekahau Pro helps you understand and optimize your deployment based on modern and legacy Wi-Fi standards.

For Planning…
- Automated design of 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax environments
- Channel planning for the mixed 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax environments
- 2500+ enterprise access points and antennas

… and Site Surveys …
- Passive and active 802.11ax site surveys
- 802.11ax throughput surveys
- 802.11ax noise and interference analysis
- Spectrum analysis (using Ekahau Sidekick)
- Channel bandwidth heatmaps

Spectrum Analysis

Fight Interference
Wi-Fi works over public frequencies, which makes it vulnerable to interference from other devices sharing the same spectrum. Validate the availability of free RF spectrum by measuring channel utilization and detecting non-Wi-Fi interference from sources such as surveillance cameras, wireless intercom systems, headsets and microphones.

The Ekahau Sidekick fully integrates with Ekahau Pro to provide various tools for troubleshooting and minimizing interference issues during your Wi-Fi site survey, including automatic interference detection. This makes it easy for users to identify and locate the exact source causing Wi-Fi problems.

- Visualize measured interference and SNR levels on a floor plan
- Display and minimize co-channel interference
- Analyze spectrum utilization*
- Fully understand the spectrum and Wi-Fi behaviour in both 2.4 and 5GHz bands*
- On-the-spot + post-survey
- Spectrum analysis displayed as amplitude vs frequency density view, as well as over time*

*Ekahau Sidekick required..

macOS and Windows Support
Ekahau Pro runs natively on macOS and Windows.