Wi-Fi Coverage Planning in Cold Storage Logistics
“Connecting the world of food” is the slogan of one of the leading food logistics providers in Europe. Reliable connections are essential. Across more than 100 locations and with over 11,000 employees, more than 100,000 shipments are handled every day. This requires highly efficient logistics and distribution processes. Thousands of Wi-Fi-based handheld scanners are used to capture barcodes of goods being shipped. The Wi-Fi infrastructure forms the backbone of the entire logistics operation. To ensure reliable performance, Wireless.Consulting GmbH has carried out detailed wireless network planning at almost all locations. This guarantees strong and consistent Wi-Fi coverage and helps prevent “blind spots” between narrow warehouse shelves. As a result, handheld scanners and other applications now work reliably across all areas, enabling efficient warehouse logistics operations.
Challenge
The customer operates up to 130 warehouse locations across Europe where Wi-Fi infrastructures support handheld scanners and many other applications. Since 2008, Wireless.Consulting GmbH has been the partner responsible for troubleshooting, analysis, simulation, wireless coverage measurement, and planning of the Wi-Fi infrastructure defined by the customer. The goal is to provide reliable Wi-Fi coverage between shelving rows and inside refrigerated warehouses while avoiding interference such as co-channel interference and blind spots. Although specialized Wi-Fi hardware could have prevented many of these issues from the beginning, the specialists found that a large Wi-Fi infrastructure had already been deployed across the sites. Therefore, the task was to analyze the existing environments and optimize them accordingly.
Solution
With the expertise of its wireless specialists and the use of professional Wi-Fi measurement and simulation tools, Wireless.Consulting GmbH ensures reliable wireless network availability at all locations. In particular, the use of specialized antenna concepts makes it possible to achieve full Wi-Fi coverage and avoid co-channel interference, even when the existing hardware is not ideal.
