MegaMesh Study Run-Time Tips

When using the MegaMesh module there are various stages during the process where studies could run quickly, or potentially run slowly. Within SignalPro you have some capability to help increase or decrease study run times how you would like. Here are the stages where you may run into excessive calculation times, and a few quick notes on how to address those issues;

• Automatic Router Placement

- Choosing site locations quickly is a matter of having a reasonable number of "cluster sample nodes" as well as potentially setting a faster propagation model for the initial sorting phase in the "set up link propagation for initial sorting" dialog. This is the Create small cell/meter cluster sample nodes menu:

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You will want adjust the sample meters for meshing section in order to create the cluster sample file. Hop count in sample creation is the number of total hops to be used for these cluster sample points. Max number of meters per sample will be the maximum number of meters each one sample point can represent. Maximum sample radius is the maximum distance that can be between sample points. Set up link propagation for initial sorting will be covered in the next section.

• Setup Large Scale Meshing

- The setup function sorts all the meters into which router they're most likely to route back to. This is usually a relatively fast part of the process, but can become time-consuming if the mesh has a larger number of routers and/or very long linking distances. If this stage of the process is going too slowly the best thing to do is adjust the prop model options under "set up link propagation for initial sorting" and choose a model or point-spacing that will run more quickly. Here is the “setup link propagation for initial sorting” menu:

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Here you can use the drop-down menu to select a different propagation model, which is controlled from within the propagation model menu. You can also increase or decrease the lookup spacing to effect your study times as well. A greater lookup spacing should yield faster run times, a lesser lookup spacing should yield longer run times.

• Run Mesh Studies / Run All (also called single-router calculations)

- This is the portion of the process where the mesh results are finalized. The calculation time here depends on the options under "set up link propagation for single router calculations". The prop model itself can be set to something that runs more quickly, but also the distance limitations on different types of mesh link are crucial; the longer the allowed link distance is (especially for meter to meter links), the longer the study will take to complete. The calculation time can really increase geometrically in the case where the network is extremely dense (many mesh nodes in close proximity) and the link distances allowed are set too long; this creates a situation where the software needs to evaluate the link path from each node to a huge number of potential parent nodes, which might be far away and incur a lengthy calculation time. EDX typically advises adjusting those distance limitations first if the "Run All" part of the study is taking too long.

• Topology Report

- This is the optional final study where the software evaluates whether each device has alternate unique hopping paths and alternate routers to connect with. On a large, dense network this calculation may just necessarily take a long time because there's no way to estimate the result; the software simply has to search the graph for alternate pathways. There are a few settings in the topology reporting that allow you to speed it up, at the possible expense of showing a less thorough topology report. The "Hop depth for analysis" option is the main setting here; reducing that number will allow less hopping and the report will run more quickly, but possibly leave out potential paths that would require more hopping. The "limit edge count for inter-router links" also helps limit the topology tracking for very dense networks (this allows the software to stop counting once it's found N potential alternate router paths. 

For additional assistance with the MegaMesh Module, please review the knowledge base or create a support ticket here: https://edxwireless.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2