Understanding 802.11x Wireless Networking Standards

802.11x relates to a category of specifications designed by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for wireless LAN technology. The function of 802.11x is to specify the over air interface between base station and a wireless client or between two wireless clients.

802.11x was released in 1997, since then it has designated a whole new image of wireless LAN technology as a wireless network range.

After the release of 802.11x, some other upgraded devices were released. A brief account of these is given below:

802.11

It is basically meant for wireless LANs. It offers 1 or 2 Mbps transmission within the 2.44 GHz band using either direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) or frequency hopping spread spectrum ((FHSS).

802.11a

It is an extension to 802.11. It applies to wireless LANs and provides up too 54 Mbps in the 5GHz band. 802.11a neither uses DSSS nor FHSS, instead it works with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing encoding scheme.

802.11b

88002.11 b is also known as 802.11 high rate or Wi-Fi. It is basically an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANS and provides 11 Mbps transmission (with a fall back to 5.5, 2 and 1 Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band. This version uses only DSSS. 802.11b is a modification of the original 802.11 standard. It allows wireless functionality comparable to Ethernet.

802.11g

80.11 g applies to wireless LANs and provides 20+ Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band.

Security Features

After knowing the weaknesses in the first 802.11, IEEE set up a whole team dedicated to this purpose. They created a whole new replacement 802.11i. The Wi-Fi Alliance announced an interim specification called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) based on the IEEE 802.11i.

802.11n - a step in future

IEEE was proud to announce its new creation that is the new 802.11 n. This data through put is reckoned to reach a theoretical 540 Mbit/s (this may need a higher raw data rate at the physical layer). It is estimated to be 1000 times faster than 802.11b. If it is compared to the 802.1a or 802.11g, it would be 10 times faster then them in wireless network speed. They are also claiming that 802.11n will be better in operations than any other current networks.

Competitors

WWiSE (world wide spectrum efficiency) supported by Broadcom and TGn Zync backed by Phillips and Intel was among the competitors for 802.11n.

Features

802.11n is a modified version of 802.11 standards giving it additional features like MIMO (multiple input - multiple output). MIMO works with multiple transmitter and receiver antennas. This features helps in allowing for enhanced data throughput via spatial multiplying and increased range by working the spatial diversity. All this is done via coding schemes like Alamouti coding.

EWC

EWC (enhanced wireless consortium) was designed for accelerating the IEEE 802.11n development process. It also proved to be a great help in promoting a technology specification for interoperability of next generation WLAN (wireless local area network).

Continue to: Other Wireless Standards in Development