(PDF) Comparison of Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 Standards

Running head: A DETAILED COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND FUTURE IEEE 802.11
STANDARDS
A Detailed Comparison of current and future IEEE 802.11
Standards
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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A DETAILED COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND FUTURE IEEE 802.11 STANDARDS
Executive Summary
The report is prepared for presentation of a detailed comparison of the IEEE 802.11 standards for
its application in the current and future needs of the network. The IEEE 802.11 are air interface
standards that is used for connecting the wireless interfaces and communicating with each other.
There are different network technologies that are based on wired solution, but with the
deployment of the 802.11 standards the wireless LAN technologies have improved and it have
increased the scope to provide unlimited broadband access. The paper discusses on different
IEEE 802.11 standards and the encryption techniques followed for securing the wireless
networks. The security risk of the wireless network and the vulnerability are analyzed and
discussed in the report. There are several benefits of the wireless technology such as less
complexity in installation and elimination of the cabling cost and access of the network from the
mobile devices. There are several challenges of the wireless technology and this paper discussed
about the different IEEE 802.11 standards and the protocols used for the configuration of a
wireless network.

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A DETAILED COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND FUTURE IEEE 802.11 STANDARDS
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Standardization in IEEE 802...............................................................................................4
IEEE Standard Association..............................................................................................4
IEEE 802: LAN MAN standard committee.....................................................................5
Physical Layer:..............................................................................................................10
Medium Access Control Layer:.....................................................................................11
Development of IEEE 802.11:...........................................................................................12
Authentication and Encryption in 802.11:.........................................................................12
Other Standards:................................................................................................................13
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................18
References..........................................................................................................................20

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A DETAILED COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND FUTURE IEEE 802.11 STANDARDS
Introduction
There has been a convergence of the networks of communication and technologies and it
is used for the development of the data communications for application in different fields of the
telecommunication environment. The technology is not dependent on the application in different
telecommunication networks, there are different communication standards that should be
followed for establishment of connection between the nodes installed in a telecommunication
framework. The telecommunication standards are followed internationally and the specification
of the standards are set by the IETF Internet Task Engineering Force (Xie et al. 2015). The
communication devices has increased and the use of mobile handheld devices has also increased
in the recent times. Thus with the increase in the mobile users new connection technology is
required to be deployed. IEEE 802.11 standard finds its application in the WLAN, Wifi,
WiMAX, 3G, 4G, etc. It is used for supporting the growth of the wireless networks and state the
communication methodology (Fay et al. 2016). The wireless technology is growing and a
comparison is made on the different IEEE standards for finding its application in different
wireless networks. The comparison is made based on the area of coverage, bandwidth,
interference and quality of the signals.
The main focus of the study is made on the WLA technology and different literatures are
reviewed for analyzing the access points and modes used for communication. A centralized
communication mode is followed for establishment of the wireless connection between the nodes
installed in the network. A study is also made on the decentralized communication modes and
communicate directly with the access points installed in different location of the network. IEEE
802.11 standards are reviewed in the context of extension point and the features available on the
IEEE 802.11 standards. There are some upcoming standards for the development of the IEEE

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A DETAILED COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND FUTURE IEEE 802.11 STANDARDS
802.11 i.e. HiperLAN. The different layers of the network such as the physical layer, access
layer and the network layer are used for the transmission of the data packets in the network.
Radio medium are used for the transmission and for the development of the IEEE 802.11 the
targeted and the available standards are analyzed. The extension of the 802.11 are evaluated and
the data rate that should be maintained in the network are analyzed. The base standards of the
802.11 provides a data rate of 2Mbps and it can reach to 11 Mbps with the implementation of the
802.11b standards.
Standardization in IEEE 802
IEEE Standard Association
The IEEE is used for the development of nonprofit transitional methodology that are
supported by different technical activities that includes active program of standardization using
the IEEE standard association. The IEEE is a nonprofit translational technical professional
organization and it supports different technical activities such as an active standardization
program (Trappe 2015). It can be openly developed and it have been proved that the participation
of the voluntary participants can help in producing high quality accepted result that can be used
for the development of the IEEE 802.11 standards. IEE 802.11 have a parameter that is the
fragmentation threshold which defines the method of transmission also known as the
fragmentation burst. The Mac protocol data unit which is larger than the threshold is divided into
smaller elements and each of the elements are transmitted in the wireless network at a regular
interval of time. This procedure saves the cost and time wireless network by retransmitting the
smaller elements where error is found instead of resending the whole MSDU unit (Lyamin et al.
2014). There is a requirement of implementation of the QoS in the wireless LAN and the

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A DETAILED COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND FUTURE IEEE 802.11 STANDARDS
following four parameters should be considered for maintaining the quality of the network such
as:
- Bandwidth /Throughput
- Latency / Delay
- Jitter, and
- Error or data loss
The environment of the WLAN is dependent on inference and it can cause high errors
and it should be eliminated for getting the best performance of the wireless network. The
confidentiality of the network should be maintained and data should not be access by any third
party and it should reach to the user as the same fort when it was sent by the sender over the
network.
IEEE 802: LAN MAN standard committee
The 802 standards works on the Open Systems Interconnection OSI layer. The radio
waves was first used for the transferring of data packets over short distance and it is different
from the wired medium used for transmission of the data packets. Attenuation occurs in the
signals of the radio waves and thus it is difficult to find the collision between the data packets
(Zheng and Li 2015). The 802.11 standards was developed following the home and the office
networks and it was introduced in the year 1999. The primary standard of 802.11 can provide a
data rate of 2 mbps for each of the access points installed in the network the data rate can be
increased to 11 mbps with the implementation of the 802.11b standard in the network. There are
new IEEE extensions such as IEEE 802.11g and IEEE 802.11a that can be applied for
connecting the wireless local area network. The WLAN devices selected for the transmission of
the data should fulfill the security mechanism and it should also have the QoS support for