A courthouse waterfall plot shows pulsed RF energy that lines up with HVAC compressor cycles. What should the engineer do next?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
When the waterfall blinks in sync with the chillers, that's the building talking RF — walk the schedule with facilities, don't 'fix' it by twiddling beacon intervals. Averaging one lunchtime RSSI walk buries intermittent truth.
Full Explanation
A courthouse waterfall showing pulsed RF energy lined up with HVAC compressor cycles should drive correlation with building-system schedules and joint inspection of HVAC and related electromechanical sources with facilities. Time-aligned pulses are a strong clue that building equipment—not Wi-Fi beacons—is the interferer. Expert next step is facilities partnership with spectrum evidence in hand.
Assuming the pulses are normal Wi-Fi beacons and raising beacon interval to “hide” them misclassifies non-beacon pulsed energy and does not remove the source. Disabling all 6 GHz radios because HVAC “only interferes above 6 GHz” invents a band exclusivity that is not generally true and abandons useful spectrum. Ignoring time correlation and only averaging RSSI from a lunchtime walk misses the cyclic signature entirely.
Exam caveat: building electromechanical systems are frequent intermittent interferers in civic facilities—use clocks and schedules as RF clues. Operational check: overlay HVAC runtime logs with waterfall timestamps, confirm pulse coincidence, then inspect compressors/VFDs with facilities while watching spectrum clear when equipment is safely secured for test. Invite facilities to watch the waterfall live once during a compressor start so the correlation is shared knowledge, not only a wireless ticket comment.