Wireless Link Budgets: dBm and mW, Free-Space Path Loss, Antenna Gain, Wall Losses, Fade Margin & Coverage Range

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Convert Halden's device powers from milliwatts to dBm and back, add the gains and losses of one transmit chain in dB and turn the result into a plain power factor.
• Fill a path-loss table for six distances and three bands with one mixed-reference formula, then measure how much loss a longer distance and a higher frequency add.
• Look up the cable loss for four antenna sites from a two-way table, calculate the EIRP of each site, measure the headroom to Halden's design cap and colour the sites that exceed it.
• Calculate the free-space loss to six rooms, add the losses of the walls and floors in the way with XLOOKUP, total the indoor path loss and count the rooms beyond the scanners' limit.
• Complete the budget for six links: received power, fade margin against the receiver's sensitivity, a pass/fail verdict against Halden's required margin and the decibels still missing on the weak links.
• Turn the link budget around: the path loss a scanner link can afford, the maximum distance per band after an obstacle allowance, and how much a few extra decibels of margin shrink the range.
• Turn the received power in six rooms into a signal-to-noise ratio, look up the link rate with an approximate XLOOKUP, share it among the active devices and count the rooms below the needed throughput.
• Size the number of access points per floor for coverage and for capacity, find the worst survey margin in the workshop hall with MINIFS and chart all survey margins against the 10 dB target.