The value of wireless technology for traditional meeting rooms, WFH setups, and distance learning classrooms alike is clear. It’s as clear as your space when there are no more tangles of wires to connect your camera to your laptop to your display to your projector, and on and on. Here are just a few benefits you gain when you give up your cable connections:

• Extra Safety – No more tripping on wires.
• More Mobility – When you don’t have to worry about wires, you can move your laptop or visualizer around the meeting space or classroom at will.
• Increased Convenience – No more passing around a VGA cable to change presenters or switching seats to get closer to the connection.
• Better Aesthetics – Maintain cleaner, better-looking spaces that help you stand out as more professional than your competition.

All those benefits are incredible. However, if the wireless devices you’re using haven’t been properly tested, you’ll run into connection cons that immediately wipe out all the pros. The most reliable solutions are developed using a radio frequency (RF) shielded room and high-tech testing equipment to ensure hardware and software function well despite environmental interference.

The RF Shielded Room

Engineers need a space in which they can completely control every aspect of the environment that affects wireless connectivity. An RF shielded room provides that space.

It allows users to control temperature and humidity levels. You may not have thought about it, but these factors can influence your Wi-Fi connection, since water in the air can interfere with the wireless signal. The RF shielded room lets engineers set the ideal conditions for testing and fine-tuning.

It can isolate frequencies up to 100dB wireless signals from 30 Mhz to 18 Ghz for testing. Walls covered with absorbent materials that minimize RF reflection from the frequencies used inside the room ensure a stable, reproducible testing environment.

Equipment

Wireless testing involves putting a device up against common factors that tamper with a Wi-Fi connection and making adjustments to the hardware and software to optimize that connection. Engineers use the following equipment to simulate interference and analyze the device under testing (DUT):

A client emulator adds up to 256 users to the network.

An interference generator simulates traffic and waveform interference.

A programmable attenuator simulates distance between the DUT and the access point, up to 100 meters.

Various software programs analyze bandwidth, streaming video quality, and more.

Now let's get into what engineers are looking for when they apply this equipment to testing new wireless devices.

Testing Process

The process for testing Wi-Fi products includes a wide range of technical tests, with the equipment simulating various distances from the access point and different levels of traffic. AVer’s Wi-Fi team follows the TR-398 standard to verify a DUT's RF performance, bandwidth (data processing limits), coverage, stability, ability to handle interference, and video streaming quality:

• RF Performance – Engineers use a receiver sensitivity test to determine the DUT’s ability to process a weak signal.
• Bandwidth – Testers ensure the DUT can process the proper amount of data at an acceptable rate of speed.
• Coverage – Multiple tests verify that the device can maintain its wireless functionality throughout the varied connectivity quality in different areas of a given space.
• Stability – The DUT goes through 24 hours of intense testing to make sure it can offer stable quality for long periods of time.
• Interference – Engineers subject the DUT to interference from alien devices and networks to confirm that it will operate well around other Wi-Fi connections and frequencies.
• Video Streaming Quality – Using software, engineers test latency, ensure audio and video are properly synced up, and make sure that quality holds steady for the duration of a stream.

AVer Wireless

As a market-leading producer of wireless devices with education and business applications, AVer deploys an in-house professional RF shielded room for Wi-Fi testing. We’ve used that high-quality testing environment to produce wireless visualizers (document cameras), Bluetooth^® enabled video soundbars, Interactive Control Boxes, and an innovative Wireless Presentation System to make learning and collaborating more convenient and versatile.

Special thanks to Stanley Hsia, Stan Lin, Jeffrey Wang, and the rest of the AVer engineering team for providing detailed information and demonstrations for this article.