Q. If I select a small Guess Range, then the predicted coverage at the end of the survey does not cover the whole office area that I am testing. Yet, if I increase the Guess Range, the coverage shadows seem to be bigger and cover the whole office. So I am confused how the results can have any accuracy when the Guess range can easily be manipulated to change the outcome of the coverage visualization.
A. Survey results may have an accuracy close to 100% only if you survey every square centimeter of the floor plan. Of course, this is impossible in practice (and not necessary), so the application has to do some extrapolation work to calculate the results for areas that have not been surveyed but that are near the walkabout path.
There is a dependency between the guess range and the environment. If you are in the middle of a stadium field with no obstacles, Wi-Fi signal propagates freely and can be easily predicted dozens of meters around; therefore, you can use a greater guess range. If you are in a crowded office, signal propagation is very complex, so using the guess range that you used on the stadium field would be wrong. TamoGraph recommends a guess range for each environment type; this recommended value should be taken into account when you plan your walkabout paths. For example, if the recommended guess range is 5 meters and you survey the area by walking parallel paths, the distance between the parallel lines should not exceed 5 meters.
To sum this up, if you conduct a quality survey by walking the entire area and leaving no “blank spots,” and if your walkabout paths are not far apart, then increasing the guess range would have almost no negative effect. That’s because, in such a scenario, you leave no room for the guesswork.
