7SIGNAL Awarded Patent for Integrating Wi-Fi Performance Testing with Wireless Network Access Points

7SIGNAL, The Wi-Fi Performance Company, is proud to announce the issuance of patent number 9,813,930 by the USPTO acknowledging its latest innovation that combines Wi-Fi performance testing with wireless network access points.

The patent entitled, Method and Apparatus for Integrating Active Test Capability To A Wireless Access Point or Base Station, addresses the need to provide full visibility into true wireless service quality within the $5.4 billion enterprise WLAN market that grew 7.2% in 2016, according to IDC.

"This patent complements our growing intellectual property around wireless performance management,” stated Veli-Pekka Ketonen, founder and Chief Innovation Officer for 7SIGNAL. “With Wi-Fi networks being so mission critical to operations today, the need for proactive, continuous Wi-Fi monitoring, testing and alerting has accelerated. One way to accomplish this is by integrating synthetic wireless network performance monitoring capability with the access network itself. While this may sound straightforward, co-locating and simultaneously operating two radio transceivers at the same frequency band is far from simple. Done incorrectly, it destroys performance of the access point, gives incorrect performance data and has negative impact on the end user experience.” Ketonen further stated.

In one presented configuration, the access point uses a radio transceiver positioned as a part of the access point for actively measuring application service quality offered by access points in the area. In order to avoid the negative impact on the access point and network performance, the interference between testing and client serving radio transceiver must be minimized. This can be achieved by spacing the measurement antenna and access point antenna apart, using directional antenna patterns or by using proper RF filtering.

“7SIGNAL is completely focused on innovative solutions that improve wireless experiences for organizations worldwide,” stated Tom Barrett, CEO of 7SIGNAL. “Great Wi-Fi is no longer a nice-to-have…it’s mission critical for serving customers and for workflow efficiency. Poor Wi-Fi connectivity, slow throughput or network downtime can lead to lost revenue…so, we feel well positioned because we have patented solutions designed to support our customers’ business continuity initiatives.”