Wireless Access

Is there a way to estimate the number of access points by the square footage? I normally go by the floor plan, but the building is still being designed so no floor plan. The powers that be need to have and estimation on the number of access points.

I really dont think so because it depends on soo many things.... depends on the walls, depends on the Density you will have and many other factors...

There are a lot of tools that do this Using various formulas.  Anywhere from 1500-5000 sq ft per AP gets used based on the density of the environment.  This has so many holes, that typically it is only used very early in discussions.

As stated, the only time to use a number of Sq. Ft. per AP is in the earliest stages of estimation.  For that I use numbers that range from 2500 up to about 3500 Sq. Ft. per AP and this is totally dependent on a number of factors.  Construction material, client density, ACI/CCI, what type of traffic patterns we are planning on seeing, what applications are planned in the near term etc.  All of these factors as well as running the AP's at 1/2 power so that in the event of an AP interruption, the surrounding AP's have available power to increase their power to fill in the coverage gap that is created.  It is never recommended, from my years at doing RF planning, to run AP's at full power as ARM will move the AP's power and channel up and down based on the surrounding environment.  

Usually after doing a rough calculation I then do an RF Plan, either using Visual RF in Airwave or using the standalone VRF PLanning tool available on our support site.  From there if it is a challenging RF environment I will set up an AP in Backup/Persistent mode and go out to the location and spot check, that what I thought I was going to get for signal, is what I am really seeing.  

Hope this helps.