AP150W 5Ghz wifi1 max at 8dBm

[jason_hills]

I have some AP150Ws and all have their wifi1 radio maxed at 8dBm when they should be using the max power from the radio profile of 16dBm. 
the APs are set to Auto power and channel. Not using SDR mode. 
currently using ch36 20Mhz wide. 
when I changed to ch52 the power was restricted to 10dBm when I had 17dBm set manually. 
One AP150W is powered by the AC adapter the other AP150W is powered by Poe+ rated power. Both have the same low 8dBm power output on wifi0. 
the show system power mode does not respond in this model to confirm but it is not likely to be power related. 
the wifi0 interface is 2.4GHz and outputting 12dBm correctly. 
Is this low power level of 8dBm normal for this model? 
 

[SamPirok]

Hi Jason, thanks for keeping us updated. I’ll run this past our XIQ engineers today and I’ll let you know what they think.

Just for future reference, if you’re trying to tag me you’d want to tag @Sam Pirok, just tagging Sam will notify a different user.  

[jason_hills]

The story continues!!

I have now spotted the same power restriction occurs for AP250, AP245X. 
Does not occur for AP230, AP130, the latest ones AP410C, AP305C. Have not tested others. 
 

I have noticed this in many other VIQs. 
the UNII1 channels are restricted to 13 dBm. 
 

has this recently occurred? 
the NZ regulator allows 30 and 36dBm eirp which equates to approx 21 dBm tx power accounting for antenna gains and spatial streams. 

[jason_hills]

Hi @Sam i have found the root cause. It is due to the regulatory limit. It seems to be incorrectly applied for the AP150W model compared to the  other models. 
The Board limit also comes into play which limits it to 15dBm for ch100 to ch165
 

When setting the max power at device level, or when using auto with a high power limit, I found the AP restricts the output power depending on the channel.

It’s not related to acsp reports, have found the same with another AP150W different location.  POE supply isn’t a factor, as 1 AP is powered with a AC 48V, another AP with POE+.

Running 10.0r10b

Ch	Static power	Actual power
36	17	8
48	17	8
52	17	10
60	17	10
130	17	15
153	17	15
165	17	15

Seems to follow the UNII bands.

The only forum notes I found mentioned a potential board restriction in the output of int wifi1:

Understand the (1) (2) (3) is spatial streams, 

set to 10dBm for ch60 from Reg limit:

For Ch165 has 15 from board limit the Reg limit much higher at 22dBm:

For ch48 has 8dBm from regulatory limit:

The AP is set to the correct NZ code.

Is the reg limit able to be corrected above 8dBm?   Do you know if this happens on the AP302W?

I may need to try a out of country country code to achieve the higher appropriate power. 

[jason_hills]

That is what I also thought, so I set the AP to a fixed power of 17. However it still remained at 8 dBm power. 
I have other AP models in the same office which are operating at the intended power that is greater than 8dBm. 
also I am seeing the same 8dBm for multiple ap150w in different locations. So it cannot be the environment. 
 

[SamPirok]

If you have the APs set to use auto power, they’ll set the power level they think is best based on their background scans. This won’t always be the max power setting available. It would make sense that different channels have different power levels since the APs will be compensating for different levels of co-channel interference and usage levels