Does temperature humidity affect wireless signal

[AxL1971]

As per title, in an office environment does the humdity and temparture affect wireless signal

[rhbirkelund]

In short, no. Humidity and temperature does not impact the wireless signal.

[AxL1971]

I did some more reading and this is an interesting article

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9299327

[rhbirkelund]

It comes down to frequency and wavelength. For a low frequency signal, there will not be any impact to an RF signal from water in the air. The signal will penetrate the water droplets and continue on their journey. Now as the frequency increases, and wavelength decreases, the impact of humidity will be more and more. At some point the wavelength will become so short that even the water molecules (not droplets) will have an impact to the RF signal. But these are most likely in the very high frequency range. I've seen demos where mmWave signals had trouble penetrating enery-efficient windows simply due to the mateal coating on the glass.

For any noticeable effect, I seem to recall you'd have to be well above 10 GHz.

If you are walking around in the forest during a heavy rainfall, you'll most likely also have some impact on an RF signal, due to attentuation and re-/diffraction. But I'd argue that this is mostly negligeable and if at all mostly due to the foliage, rather than humiditiy.

Does water in the air impact an RF signal? Yes. But like @GreenMan notes, is the impact noticeable? Arguably no.

If you're trying to wirelessly stream Netflix while 20ft under water, you're probably going to have a bad time.

The wireless coverage is not impacted by a very humid environment in your office. If you need wireless coverage in a humid setting, you might want to look towards an outdoors or ruggedized AP, but these are more for cooled warehouses, freezers etc.

[rhbirkelund]

From the top of a quick google search, you could refer to https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11744

You'll have to review the credibility of the article, yourself.

There's also https://www.everythingrf.com/community/what-is-the-impact-of-rain-on-rf-signal-propagation which usually are on point.

[GreenMan]

In reality there are probably kind of two answers to this.   The physics (as outline in the article referenced above) makes it clear that 'Yes, if affects wireless signal'.   The other side to it would be 'Does it affect my wireless signal enough to cause me a problem in practise?' - and that's a whole different question, because a wireless environment is affected by a huge host of other factors.   If your environment is 'close to the edge' so-to-speak, from one or more other factors, it's possible that changes in heat/humidity could tip it over.    Bear in mind too, it looks like the testing referred to above is for frequencies only up to 2.4 GHz, which has overuse problems all of its own, generally - 5 (& increasingly 6) GHz would be more affected, given the much higher frequency.

If your office does suffer with high humidity, in particular, I think you'd just take more care to try to minimise the deleterious effects of the other factors.   You might also look closer at your air conditioning system;   it sounds like your employees might thank you for that, way before the WiFi is affected

MT15 anyone? 😀