Apparatus for supporting layout of wireless base stations in building
In the construction of a wireless network in a building, structure conditions such as the floor plan of the building and the shape of the floor, material conditions such as materials for structures, and the like have a great effect on radio wave propagation characteristics. This causes a problem that unless these pieces of information are taken into consideration, an accurate layout design of wireless base stations cannot be made. In the construction of a new wireless network in a building, a wireless network similar to structure conditions of a newly constructed building is extracted from structure conditions of past buildings in which a wireless network is constructed. The layout positions of wireless base stations used in the extracted wireless network are regarded as the layout positions of wireless base stations in the new wireless network.
1. An apparatus that includes a processor and memory, the processor configured to carry out a method of supporting layout of wireless base stations in a building, the method comprising:
storing at least a floor plan of an existing building, an attribute of a structure of the existing building, and a layout position of a wireless base station in the existing building;
generating a graph related to the exiting building and storing said graph related to the existing building;
defining, based on a floor plan of a new building or an attribute of a structure of the new building, part of space included in the new building as a node, defining, as an edge (link), a propagation path which is located between the node and another node adjacent to the node and through which a radio wave propagates, and generating a graph related to the new building by adding information indicating a link between the node and the edge (link);
evaluating correlation between a subgraph serving as part of said graph related to the new building and a subgraph serving as part of said stored graph related to the existing building, and extracting an existing subgraph having a high degree of correlation; and
displaying the floor plan of the new building and extracting the layout position of the wireless base station from the extracted subgraph of the existing building and displaying the layout position.
2. The apparatus according to claim 1 ,
wherein the method further comprises storing the floor plan of the new building, the node, the edge (link), and the information indicating the link between the node and the edge (link).
3. The apparatus according to claim 2 ,
wherein the method further comprises:
extracting a plurality of subgraphs related to the respective floor plans of the new building and the existing building; and
displaying the floor plan of the new building, extracting layout positions of a plurality of wireless base stations from the plurality of subgraphs of the existing building, and displaying the layout positions on the floor plan.
4. The apparatus according to claim 2 ,
wherein the method further comprises storing with an attribute of a structure of a building an electrical property of the structure, the electrical property being at least one of permittivity, permeability, and conductivity.
5. The apparatus according to claim 1 ,
wherein the displaying of the layout position represents a degree of correlation using one of color depth and color type.
6. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises extracting, while newly registering the graph related to the new building, a difference between said graph to be newly registered and all or part of an already registered graph and, if a difference of the layout of the wireless base station is smaller than a predetermined value, registering the difference as a difference acting as a small error factor and, if the difference is greater than the predetermined value, registering the difference as a difference acting as a large error factor.