An effective multiuser Wi-Fi deployment can require significant testing to ensure adequate service to all users. Airlines providing Wi-Fi service on their planes face the additional task of ensuring that Wi-Fi signals won't interfere with sensitive navigation and communications equipment.
To speed the testing that would ensure adequate minimum single levels for passengers equipped with Wi-Fi devices while keeping maximum Wi-Fi signal strengths at safe levels, Boeing developed a new signal-quality measurement process. To validate the process, Boeing deployed 20,000 lbs. of potatoes to serve as passenger stand-ins during tests on a decommissioned plane. The potatoes, dubbed SPUDS, for Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution, made it unnecessary for people representing passengers to remain motionless on the plane for the duration of weeks of testing.
The concept of the new signal-quality measurement process began at a Boeing metrology laboratory in Seattle. Appearing in a four-minute video, Dennis Lewis, a metrology engineer at Boeing, said, “We have taken some of the techniques that were developed here in the metrology lab for precision calibrations, and we have been able to employ those for aircraft measurements.”
Boeing reported with the help of the SPUDS, Boeing's test engineers were able to validate a new process for measuring signal quality, using proprietary measurement technology and analysis tools to complement the SPUDS. A brief glimpse of the test equipment provided in the video suggested that PXI instruments were involved, although no logos are visible. The new process can achieve in hours what once required two weeks of testing.
Rebecca J. Rosen wrote about this story in the Atlantic and attracted several interesting comments: one commenter suggested that airlines treat passengers like sacks of potatoes; others wondered whether the test subjects (couch potatoes) ultimately ended up as in-flight meals. To this last point, CNN reported that after testing, the potatoes were sent to a food bank.
Here is a less-vegetable-intensive approach to Wi-Fi channel emulation.
I have previously reported on testing Wi-Fi deployments on aircraft and throughout a museum campus.