“Ekahau design” is often used as shorthand for “heatmap.” The heatmap is one output of the process, and on its own, it is one of the least complete ways to evaluate the design. What you are actually buying is a documented set of engineering decisions: how many access points, which models, which antennas, where they mount, how they are cabled and powered, what channels and transmit power they run, and what performance those choices are expected to deliver against a written requirement.
Below are the components a professional design package may cover, and how to tell whether the scope matches what your project actually needs.
It starts with requirements, not floor plans
A design cannot be judged correct or incorrect until someone writes down what it has to do. Before any modeling begins, the design should capture:
- Applications and their tolerances. Barcode scanning, voice, video, real-time location, wireless payment terminals and guest browsing have very different sensitivity to latency, jitter and packet loss.
- Client inventory. Which bands each device type supports, how many spatial streams it has, how much power it can transmit, and whether it supports the roaming assistance mechanisms in 802.11k/v/r. The weakest important client sets the design constraint, not the newest laptop.
- Coverage areas and their priority. Which spaces require primary coverage, which require a usable secondary AP for roaming, and which are explicitly excluded — stairwells, plant rooms, storage, exterior areas.
- Density and usage patterns. Peak concurrent devices per area, and when peaks occur.
- Physical and operational constraints. Ceiling heights and construction, aesthetic or heritage restrictions, cable pathways, switch port availability, PoE budget, and environmental ratings.
These become the thresholds the model is measured against: a signal strength target on a named band, a minimum signal-to-noise ratio, a limit on how many co-channel neighbors are heard above a given level, and a minimum expected data rate. Without them, a model has nothing to pass or fail. This is also why designing for capacity rather than coverage can materially change an access point count on the same floor plan.
Building the model
Scaled floor plans
Drawings are imported and scaled against a known dimension. Scale errors propagate into every attenuation calculation in the model, so this step is verified rather than assumed. Multi-floor buildings are stacked and aligned so that floor-to-floor propagation is accounted for.
Walls and materials
Every wall, window, door, shaft and structural element that matters is drawn with an attenuation value appropriate to its construction. Drywall, concrete, cinder block, glass, laminated glass with metallic coatings, elevator shafts and metal racking behave very differently, and the difference is often larger than any transmit power adjustment could compensate for. Where drawings are unreliable, material attenuation is confirmed on site rather than guessed. Our article on how wall size and materials affect Wi-Fi covers why this step carries so much of the model’s accuracy.
Access point and antenna selection
The AP model, its radio configuration and its antenna pattern are selected deliberately. Internal omnidirectional antennas suit standard ceiling heights; high ceilings, narrow aisles, corridors and stadium-style spaces frequently call for directional or downtilt antennas instead. Antenna choice is a design decision with as much impact as placement, and it is one of the most common omissions in an incomplete or overly simplified design.
Mounting
Mount height, orientation and method are specified per AP. An AP modeled at ceiling height but installed above a suspended ceiling, inside a metal enclosure, or mounted vertically on a wall when the model assumed a horizontal ceiling mount will not perform as designed.
Channel and transmit power planning
The design specifies a channel plan per band, including channel widths, and a transmit power range per radio. Wider channels can increase peak throughput, but they reduce the number of available channel-reuse opportunities and increase integrated noise power, so channel width is chosen against the requirement rather than set to maximum by default. 320 MHz channels, for example, are a Wi-Fi 7 capability on 6 GHz specifically, and are not a general answer to a slow network.
Transmit power is planned, not maximized. Running every radio at full power expands cell size and increases the overlap between cells. Larger overlapping cells put more devices on the same channel competing for the same airtime — co-channel contention — and can encourage some clients to remain associated with a distant AP longer than is desirable. Power planning is about making cells the right size, and about keeping the AP’s transmit power sensibly matched to what the clients can transmit back.
What the deliverable package covers
Depending on project scope, a professional design package may include:
- A written requirements document with the thresholds the design was measured against
- AP placement drawings with mount height, orientation, antenna type and a unique identifier per AP
- Modeled coverage visualizations, clearly labeled by band and metric, showing signal strength, SNR, co-channel overlap and expected data rate
- Channel and transmit power plan per band
- A bill of materials: APs, antennas, mounts, brackets, enclosures and any environmental hardware
- Cabling and power notes: drop locations, pathway constraints, PoE class per AP and resulting switch requirements
- Installation notes covering anything a contractor could get wrong, and a statement of assumptions and exclusions
What a predictive design is not
A predictive design is a model built before deployment. A survey is measured RF work performed in the real environment using appropriate survey equipment and a documented methodology. They are different activities producing different evidence, and the terms should never be used interchangeably. A model can be validated against on-site measurements — attenuation checks, an AP-on-a-stick exercise in a difficult area, or a spectrum sweep to identify non-Wi-Fi energy — and doing so is what separates a defensible model from an optimistic one.
Validation closes the loop
After installation, a post-installation validation survey measures what was actually built: signal strength and SNR on each band, secondary coverage for roaming, channel plan as deployed, and, where included in scope, throughput or application-performance testing against the original requirement. A predictive design remains a prediction until post-installation validation confirms how the installed network actually performs against the original requirements. When validation is part of the project scope, differences between the model and deployed environment can be corrected or documented before final acceptance.
TekFidelity uses Ekahau AI Pro and Ekahau Sidekick, supported by ECSE Design-certified expertise. If you want to see how requirements, modeling, and validation fit together across a professional Wi-Fi design engagement, our enterprise Wi-Fi design services page walks through the full process and deliverables.