For warehouse mobility systems, wireless networks act as a critical conduit for real-time data. Warehouses rely on their wireless infrastructure for seamless, uninterrupted connectivity. The automated receiving, shipping, picking, putaway, and yard operations enabled by mobile computing and portable printing are completely dependent on reliable connections.
But if your wireless infrastructure is not well maintained, it can actually hurt your productivity. Aging or obsolete wireless networks can lead to costly coverage gaps, dead zones, or data transmission failures. Wireless LANs should be periodically tuned and updated to ensure consistent coverage. Any gaps in coverage or interference problems can lead to disruption of inventory management, asset tracking, and voice and data communications.
Constantly Changing Wireless Environment
Even the best designed WLAN will need to be tweaked to keep up with a dynamic warehouse environment. Goods with different types of radio frequency attenuation enter and leave the warehouse frequently and are stacked and stored in varying locations and in varying densities. Forklift-mounted readers frequently roam across different access points. Sources of interference can shift dramatically from one day to the next.
Increasingly, new types of mobile devices used by managers and other staffers also compete for bandwidth. If you allow use of personal tablets or smartphones on the warehouse network, or if the warehouse shares infrastructure with the office areas of the facility, the wireless infrastructure should be designed or upgraded to accommodate those devices. Otherwise, voice and data traffic will be much higher than anticipated, which could strain network capacity.
If you are implementing a new WLAN, the process should start with a thorough wireless site survey. The RF design of your network will depend on the vendor or systems integrator knowing how the warehouse is laid out, what potential sources of interference exist, and what types of stock will be stored there. For highly dynamic warehouses, all potential stocking and staffing scenarios should be considered in advance to ensure the network can perform under all circumstances.
Once the network is up and running, it should be regularly audited and tuned. This requires additional site surveys, which can uncover new sources of interference or additional coverage problems.
Typically, these issues may include dead zones with no coverage, competition for bandwidth, or sluggish throughput. Depending on the nature of the problem, you may need to increase your access point density or increase AP power. That’s because many smaller handheld devices don’t have enough power to effectively communicate with the access points. The wireless infrastructure should be configured to serve the lowest-powered mobile devices that will be used in the facility.
The network should also be designed with redundancy in mind, so that if there is a problem with a single AP, mobile devices can quickly roam to a neighboring AP and minimize downtime. If the wireless infrastructure will carry voice in addition to data traffic, the network should be configured to prioritize the more latency-sensitive voice traffic.
If bandwidth is the problem, consider updating to a more recent flavor of Wi-Fi such as 802.11n, which provides more security, faster throughput, and less interference.
Identifying the sourced of your wireless woes is easier than ever. There are now wireless network analytics software systems that can help troubleshoot and fix wireless network bottlenecks and interference or security issues. Also, wireless network solutions like WiNG Enterprise and WiNG Express from Zebra Technologies provide enterprise-class WLAN that can be easily deployed and scaled.
Centralized wireless infrastructure management tools can also help improve data traffic flow and performance. In configurations where each AP operates as a separate node, it can be difficult to balance channel and power settings. A centralized controller can adjust settings for an entire facility (often automatically), and make it easier to detect rogue APs and identify points of interference.
By properly planning the network based on a thorough site survey, adjusting the WLAN to meet new needs or changes in the facility, and utilizing technology to identify and remedy coverage gaps and other problems, you can keep the wireless infrastructure in your warehouse running optimally. With a fully functioning WLAN, your warehouse will continue to operate efficiently and effectively.
