What is a WiFi heat map?
Definition
A WiFi heat map is a colour-coded map of a physical space. In network planning, it shows signal strength so you can place access points: cool tones mean weak coverage, hot tones mean strong coverage or overlap. In WiFi analytics, the same technique shows where visitors gather and how long they stay.
Heat map (WiFi) explained
The planning heat map comes from a site survey. An engineer walks the floor plan measuring signal from each access point, or models it in software, and the result shows coverage gaps, dead zones behind walls and areas where APs overlap on the same channel. It is the evidence behind access point placement and channel planning in any venue design.
The analytics heat map uses the network the other way round. Instead of measuring the APs, it uses the APs to measure people: devices detected in each zone are plotted as footfall density or dwell intensity across the floor plan. Operations teams use it to find bottlenecks, busy paths and underused space, and to explain spatial insight to people who will never read a spreadsheet.
Heat maps and presence analytics are related but not the same. A heat map shows where devices are concentrated; presence analytics counts visits, repeat rates and dwell over time. Both run on existing WiFi infrastructure, and both need anonymised or consented device data to stay within GDPR.
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