Cisco Cisco Catalyst 6000 Multilayer Switch Feature Card MSFC2 White Paper
© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 29 of 41
Side Mounting
Depending on the dimensions of the room, it may be possible to cover the entire room from the sides. If the room
is wider than two cells will accommodate (assuming each cell is covering one half of the room), it will be necessary
to use directional antennas and mechanical downtilt to cover individual sections of the room for each radio. Large
rooms will have aisles separating seating sections and this space may be used to design cell overlap areas. If
mechanical downtilt and directional antennas are used to achieve this, the higher the antenna may be mounted
and the larger the resulting cell will be. Good results can be achieved with antennas mounted as low as eight feet
up on the wall with 30-60 degrees of downtilt.
Front and Rear Mounting
The fronts and rear of rooms are other areas where there will generally be open space between the edge of the
room and the users. In a theater style room, look for mounting positions under or in front of the raised platform or
stage and the overhead facing out. It is possible to place APs in both locations, using the lower position on or near
the floor and antennas such as the AIR-ANT2460NP-R at 80 degrees horizontal and 75 degrees vertical to cover
the first rows. (Note that two of these provide almost a full 180 degrees of coverage and two channels of 2.4 GHz).
For 5 GHz, use the AIR-ANT5160NP-R at 65 degrees horizontal and vertical. Additional APs can be mounted near
the ceiling facing back into the room using the AIR-ANT25137NP-R at 55 degrees vertical and horizontal to cover
the section behind the first rows (with 55 degrees, 3-4 channels). This pattern can be repeated from the rear of the
room and it will provide a lot of channels from the perimeter.
In Figure 14, APs have been mounted low to the floor, providing a cell that will use the users to attenuate the
propagation distance. APs have also been mounted near the ceiling using mechanical downtilt to manage the
resulting cell size.
Figure 14. APs Mounted Low to the Floor