Engineers investigate wireless architecture improvements

Modern buildings such as shopping centres, hotels, airports and exhibition centres are increasingly reliant on a range of wireless communications, with not only mobiles phones and wi-fi but RFID tagging, EDGE, Bluetooth and wireless CCTV.

However, architects are now obliged to include more metal within structures for things such as insulating foil and metallic-based tinting in heat-reflective windows.

This can create problems with interference of wireless communications, as Dr John Batchelor of Kent told The Engineer.

‘You see this all the time — we had an extension done where new insulation went in and now the radio in the kitchen won’t work anymore,’ he said.

‘You have architecture for structural and aesthetic reasons and for thermal insulation and energy conservation, but also we ought to think about wireless architecture as well, because more and more people are dependent on it.’ 

Batchelor also pointed out that the electromagnetic spectrum is a ‘finite resource’ that calls for frequency re-use in increasingly localised regions in the built environment.