This document provides all the information required to conduct a successful wireless site survey in accordance with Nile's guidelines. It is organized into three parts:

This guide assumes that the person performing the survey already understands standard wireless site survey fundamentals, including survey preparation, floor-plan validation, scaling, wall attenuation, AP-on-a-stick methodology, RF behavior, coverage validation, and report generation. These general survey concepts are not covered in detail here.

The purpose of this document is to capture Nile-specific survey expectations, design targets, EIRP guidance, 6 GHz considerations, secondary coverage validation, predictive design requirements, and pre-upload requirements.

Start the design by identifying the customer’s business use case and the least capable, most important client device in the environment. Examples include barcode scanners in warehouses, paging devices in healthcare facilities, and laptops in enterprise office environments.

Also account for the applications that will use the wireless network, such as video, VoIP, cloud backups, dorm-room gaming devices, or other high-throughput and latency-sensitive applications.

Nile SLAs depend on a redundant and resilient wireless design. A key design target is to aim for -67 dBm secondary signal strength on the 5 GHz spectrum.

In typical enterprise office spaces, capacity often needs closer attention than coverage. A typical AP can cover a radius of up to 50 ft (15 m) in open space when mounted at 10–12 ft (3–3.7 m), but modern open-office layouts often create high-density environments where each desk may have multiple connected devices.

For these environments, reducing transmit power does not necessarily mean over-deploying APs. The AP count is usually justified by the capacity requirement rather than coverage alone. See Zone-Based Planning for how to size these areas.

If the site has unusual conditions or unknown materials, validate the design assumptions with an AP-on-a-stick test before finalizing the AP count. Examples include:

If the floor plan, physical layout, occupancy, application mix, AP model, mounting height, or coverage area changes after the design is shared, re-run the predictive design and notify the Nile SA.

The values in the following table are intended to serve as practical starting points and are expected to be suitable for most deployments. However, every environment is unique, and these recommendations should be adjusted as needed.

Final design decisions should consider factors such as client density, application requirements, mounting height, building characteristics, and redundancy requirements. Surveyors are encouraged to use predictive surveys, AP-on-a-stick testing, and field validation to fine-tune the design. In lower-density environments where secondary coverage is not required, transmit power may be increased cautiously after verifying coverage, roaming behavior, and interference levels.

6 GHz introduces design decisions that do not exist for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, especially the choice between Low Power Indoor and Standard Power with AFC.

Use LPI for dense indoor environments such as stadiums and conference halls. LPI allows more APs to be deployed while reducing power to avoid interference.

Use Standard Power 6 GHz carefully because it requires AFC and higher EIRP values. Plan based on the AFC availability and the coverage requirement.

For the best client experience on 6 GHz, the 6 GHz and 5 GHz cell sizes should be similar.

Cell size decreases as frequency increases. If 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz operate at the same power level, the expected cell-size order is 2.4 GHz > 5 GHz > 6 GHz.

For high-density enterprise offices, use the high-density row in the Recommended EIRP Planning Matrix as the starting point, then adjust based on the environment being designed.

Make sure the following items are present in the survey file and the report before uploading to the site survey job: