DHL

The challenge

DHL is the world’s leading logistics company.  Employing over 350,000 people in over 220 countries, the East midlands Cargo hub is their largest UK site has had significant investment to develop it into a state-of-the-art facility.

DHL initially engaged Performance Networks to conduct a Spectrum Analysis survey for their East Midlands cargo warehouse. A section of their new multi-million pound automated sorting machines operation was being affected by interference which had the possibility to cause costly delays. They could see it was external (non-WiFi) interference but could not locate the source.

Our solution

Performance Networks started to investigate the reported issue by performing a full site survey using one of our spectrum Analysers. The issue was mainly affecting a specific area within the facility. Before Performance Networks were engaged, an alternative spectrum analyser had been used to understand the source of the interference, however this could only identify the estimated area of the interference not the source, but gave our engineers a good place to start the investigations.

A key part of the system worked on a specific part of the 5GHz range, so the software was set to first scan this range. Once the interference “signature” was seen we then narrowed the scanned range. There were multiple interferers being seen across the specified channels at -70 to -40dBm.

A walk of all the whole area was required to test Amplitude variations & to dismiss any harmonics acting as red herrings.

Due to the amount of metal (causing RF reflections etc) in the area a detailed analysis was required to pinpoint the offending device.

The result

Once identified, the device was powered down so we could monitor and confirm that there was no longer any interference.

The analysis showed the interference was caused by PIR sensors within other hardware devices, these were disabled to allow normal operation to proceed.

DHL have since engaged with Performance Networks to assist them in the optimisation of other parts of their wireless infrastructure to ensure best performance.