Wireless LAN Design Tools

"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 ensuringthat 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 isa 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 communicationsnetworks 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 ofDefense and commercial enterprise customers. The WLAN design software t