WLAN PLANNING AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN IN UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI PETRONAS

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is one of the new networking environments
where it supports the mobility of the network user without being encumbered by the
cable existence. Since the current Local Area Network (LAN) in Universiti Teknologi
PETRONAS (UTP) is fairly growth and the performance reliability is good shifting the
current setup to WLAN is locally accepted. This will benefit all the UTP users
including students, respective lecturers, and beneficial for administration line of staff.
The current planning and setup will cover certain stages in order to build a high
reliability and best performance of the WLAN environment. Data transmission and
signal strength for the area is fairly surveyed in order to result the best performance and
ability to transmit data in bit per second required.
Research and questionnaire have also been done throughout the UTP students, IT Media
Services Executives, respective IT Consultants from KLCCB Project Berhad in order to
determine the best design concept to be applied in UTP campus and to determine the
best place for WLAN to be implemented. Usage models are also needed to be
determined in order to support the activity that will be in the WLAN environment. The
conceptual design of WLAN environment will cater the area of the student residential
including the Student Center, cafeteria, and residential buildings for Village 3,4 and 5.
With help of this design it will be easier to determine the location of all the devices such
as the wireless access point (AP) and security access point (SAP) as to roam the signal
coverage and to secure the signal for data transmission. The technology use in data
transmission is also being covered in this research paper, which includes the Spread
Spectrum LAN. As to meet the problem statement requirement to ensure the system
meets the budgeted cost, the author came out with the budgeting plan for all the devices
allocated for the WLAN setup. The WLAN planning and setup in UTP research will
help the UTP management in getting the grasp idea how to setup WLAN environment
in UTP campus and to compliance with the current LAN setup and to secure the cost
and budgeting for all devices related.