Productivity and security issues drive demand for wireless networks

Mr Muller, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Motorola Asia-Pacific, said mobility solutions that improved operations, increased worker productivity and ensured the security of goods and personnel were in increasing demand.

The use of mobile bar code scanning solutions enabled ports to eliminate keying errors and the latency of information typical of paper-based batch systems, and reduce or eliminate the need for clerical help to do data entry, he said.

However, he warned, under-sizing the WLAN system capacity of ports has been a common problem. “Additionally, as the port expands, operators experience large costs involved with expanding the coverage and capacity of their wireless network.”

Network planning, management and optimisations solutions provided by Motorola help customers design their network taking into consideration variations over time, said Mr Muller.

He warned that ports should avoid introducing mobility into an operation with poor processes. “This only makes a poorly run operation run faster.”

He also highlighted the harsh port environment from the RF (radio frequency) propagation perspective, with changing topologies, multipath fading and large metal obstacles – mainly containers – that can degrade WLAN performance.

“It is important to have a WLAN system that is smart and adaptive, with the ability to self-heal and optimise to reduce coverage issues and connectivity problems.”