S 4 W: a problem solving environment for wireless system design
This work describes the Site Specific System Simulator for Wireless System Design (S4W) a problem solving environment (PSE) that integrates visualization and computational tools with a high level graphical user interface. S4W improves the ability of wireless system engineers to design an indoor wireless system by encouraging them to think in terms of designing the system for optimal performance. Issues of computation management, data management, and location of resources are hidden from the user. The complex nature of data sets in the domain of wireless simulations calls for a customized set of visualization tools. Therefore, a number of ad hoc visualizations were developed for S4W. A study comparing the integrated system with an earlier, unintegrated version is presented. This helps to demonstrate the productivity gains that a PSE provides. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.