IN Brief:
- SeeHawk Touch now measures Wi-Fi across 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz channels.
- Wi-Fi can be surveyed alongside cellular, public safety and private wireless networks within the same field workflow.
- The update works with IBflex and Gflex scanning receivers without requiring a separate Wi-Fi dongle.
PCTEL has added Wi-Fi 6 and 6E coverage measurements to SeeHawk Touch, bringing 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz Wi-Fi testing into the same tablet workflow used for cellular, public safety and private wireless surveys.
The Wi-Fi measurement path runs through the Android tablet hosting SeeHawk Touch and can be used alongside PCTEL IBflex and Gflex scanning receivers. A separate Wi-Fi measurement dongle is not required, reducing the amount of additional hardware carried when several radio systems have to be surveyed across the same site.
SeeHawk Touch already supports grid testing inside buildings, outdoor walk testing, drive testing, BDA commissioning, troubleshooting and reporting. PCTEL also supports simultaneous collection across several bands and technologies, allowing measurements from different radio systems to be tied to the same physical survey rather than gathered through separate site visits.
Wi-Fi 6E extends Wi-Fi operation into the 6 GHz band alongside the established 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ranges. The additional spectrum provides more channel capacity, but indoor propagation changes with frequency and building construction, so walls, glazing, floors and other structures can affect the three bands differently once the access points are installed.
That variation becomes more difficult to assess where Wi-Fi shares the building with public mobile coverage, private cellular systems and public safety radio. Distributed antenna systems or bidirectional amplifiers may support areas where the structure weakens external signals, while enterprise access points provide a separate layer of local connectivity across the same floors.
Combining those measurements in one field workflow avoids repeating the same physical route with a different map and instrument set for each network. The engineer can associate several radio measurements with the same location data, which makes weak coverage or interference easier to compare across systems when a building has several communications layers.
Grid testing divides a floor plan into defined measurement areas and is useful where coverage has to meet an acceptance threshold throughout a building. Path testing records measurements continuously along the route followed by the operator, giving more spatial detail when a weak area has to be traced through corridors, rooms or changes in construction.
SeeHawk Touch also supports automated BDA commissioning and reporting, with results feeding into SeeHawk Central and other design or reporting tools. Keeping the site geometry, measurements and test records within the same workflow reduces the need to transcribe data after the survey and makes repeated tests easier to compare against an earlier baseline.
The scanning receiver and tablet handle different parts of the acquisition chain. Compatible PCTEL receivers gather configured cellular or radio measurements, while the tablet now provides the Wi-Fi path directly. Bluetooth or USB links connect supported scanners to the application so the measurements can be recorded against the same route and floor plan.
The software is intended for installed network assessment rather than laboratory protocol conformance. Its job begins after access points, antennas, distributed systems and associated infrastructure are in place, when predictive design has to be compared with the radio conditions produced by the finished building.
Six gigahertz coverage makes that comparison particularly useful because higher frequency signals can lose more energy through walls and other materials. Access point placement, ceiling construction, glazing and nearby equipment can all shift usable coverage away from a planning model, especially where the design relies on 6 GHz channels to add capacity.
Wi-Fi hardware is already moving towards another generation of radio features. Edgewater has moved selected Wi-Fi 8 Spectrum Slicing functions onto an FPGA evaluation platform, showing how field measurement tools will have to keep pace as network behaviour and available spectrum continue to change.
The SeeHawk Touch update extends the current survey workflow rather than creating a separate Wi-Fi tool chain. Cellular, critical communications and Wi-Fi measurements can now be collected against the same building geometry, giving the engineer one field record for systems that still use different radios, frequency bands and acceptance criteria.
