Understanding the standards of Wireless LAN 802.11

Share This:

Share Tweet Pin

802.11 refers to a family of specifications developed by the IEEE for wireless LAN (WLAN) technology.

802.11 specifies an over-the-air interface between a wireless client and a base station or between two wireless clients.

The IEEE accepted the specification in 1997.

There are several specifications in the 802.11 family:

802.11 —

1. Applies to wireless LANs.
2. Provides 1 or 2 Mbps transmission in the 2.4 GHz band 
3. uses either frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) or direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS).

802.11a —

1. An extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs
2. Provides up to 54-Mbps in the 5GHz band.
3. 802.11a uses an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing encoding scheme rather than FHSS or DSSS.

802.11b (also referred to as 802.11 High Rate or Wi-Fi) —

1. An extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANS and
2. Provides 11 Mbps transmission (with a fallback to 5.5, 2 and 1-Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band.
3. 802.11b uses only DSSS.
4. 802.11b was a 1999 ratification to the original 802.11 standard, allowing wireless functionality comparable to Ethernet.

802.11e —

1. A wireless draft standard that defines the Quality of Service (QoS) support for LANs, 
2. It is an enhancement to the 802.11a and 802.11b wireless LAN (WLAN) specifications.
3. 802.11e adds QoS features and multimedia support to the existing IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11a wireless standards, while maintaining full backward compatibility with these standards.

802.11g —

1. Applies to wireless LANs and is used for transmission over short distances at up to 54-Mbps in the 2.4 GHz bands.

802.11n —

1. 802.11n builds upon previous 802.11 standards by adding multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO).
2. The additional transmitter and receiver antennas allow for increased data throughput through spatial multiplexing and increased range by exploiting the spatial diversity through coding schemes like Alamouti coding.
3. The real speed would be 100 Mbit/s (even 250 Mbit/s in PHY level), and so up to 4-5 times faster than 802.11g.

802.11ac —

1. 802.11ac builds upon previous 802.11 standards particularly the 802.11n standard, to deliver data rates of 433Mbps per spatial stream, or 1.3Gbps in a three-antenna (three stream) design.
2. The 802.11ac specification operates only in the 5 GHz frequency range and features support for wider channels (80MHz and 160MHz) and beamforming capabilities by default to help achieve its higher wireless speeds.