Static microcell over-the-air architectures usually require the administrator or a planning tool to generate the radio frequency (RF) parameters—channel selection and transmit power, in this case—for the access points. The most basic implementations just require the user to select a channel and power level. Of course, the system may have some defaults, and may even attempt to make some initial scanning to chose "better" channels. Nevertheless, once a choice is made, the choice does not change unless the administrator selects a new value or uploads a new RF plan.
This does introduce the concept of RF planning, which will be addressed in the section on RF (Section 5.3). The key to the static (and the subsequent dynamic) microcell architectures is the dedication of the available Wi-Fi channels to avoiding neighboring access point interference, thus resulting in an alternating pattern of channel assignments, where the closest neighbors always have different channels. For static systems, the installer is required to know how to do this by sight, or by using the RF planning tools. Furthermore, because these architectures also require reducing power levels significantly to avoid interference from second-order (further away) neighbors, and lower power levels translates into less range and smaller cell sizes, these architectures are also known as microcell.
Standalone access points are the most obvious candidates for static over-the-air architectures, because there is no system changing channels or power levels on the network. However, all of the wireline architectures can be made to behave statically, though how to do so may not be obvious and setting the network in that mode may not be recommended.
The advantage of the static architecture is that the RF plan is consistent, thus allowing for a more predictable coverage. The disadvantage is that the network does not react to changes in its environment, such as persistent noise or neighboring network interference.
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