WiFi- WIRELESS FIDELITY -WIRELESS NETWORKS-IEEE 802.11- Wi-Fi Standards

IEEE 802.11 is standard use world widely for Wireless Local Area network, WLAN, it stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In simple words it is standard of communication between computers and wireless devices. The standards were set by IEEE LAN/MAN Standard committee in 5GHZ and 2.4 GHz public spectrum bands.

Wi-Fi and 802.11 is interchangeable terminologies and can be refer to one and same thing. 802.11 is technical name and mostly used among highly professionals and technical personals, where as Wi-Fi is more general term used by most of internet users.

History of IEEE 802.11

The IEEE is incorporated in the New York State ,United States. It was developed by the merger of two institutes, Institute of Radio Engineers ,IRE, it was founded in 1912 and American Institute of Electric Engineers, AIEE, formed in 1884.

AIEE had major interests in wire communications i.e. telegraph, telephonic. Where as IRE had its emphasis on radio engineering. It formed two organizations known to be Society of Wireless and Telegraph engineers and the Wireless institute. In 1930s used of electrons increased, electronic engineers usually became IRE members. Applications of electron tube however became wide and extensive, in result technical boundaries differentiating the AIEE and AIEE turns to be very harder to distinguish. These two organizations became much more competitive after World war II. In 1961 the leaders of both IRE and AIEE resolved the constitution, eventually two organizations officially merged in January 1, 1963 and called IEEE. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Description of IEEE 802.11

Over-the air modulation techniques are used in the 802.11 family which based on basic protocol. The most popular in 802.11 family is 802.11b and 802.11g protocols, it is basically the amendments to the original standard. 802.11a was first wireless network standard, however the most widely accepted one was 802.11b, later followed by 802.11g and 802.11n. Security issues were encountered in export requirement of certain governments in result it was enhance to 803.11i.

802.11n is new multi streaming modulation technique which is still under development, but products based on this modulation techniques are still been sold. There are other standards in the family in introduced C-f,h, j these are amendments and enhancements or corrections to previous standard specifications.

802.11b and 802.11g acquire 2.4 GHz ISM band, it is operational in United Stats under part 15 of US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). As these bands are used frequently 802.11b and 802.11g suffers interference with microwave ovens cordless phones etc.

Bluetooth device uses same band but they do not interfere with bands like 802.11b and 802.11g because they use Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum signaling methods which is also know as FHSS, however 802.11b and g bands uses Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Signaling method and its known to be DSSS.

Protocol Summary

This table shows 802.11 family bands and organized according to there invention date, Frequency, throughputs, Data rate, modulation technique, ranges etc.