802.11 Standards and Amendments

802.11b

(also referred to as 802.11 High Rate or Wi-Fi) — An extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANS and provides 11 Mbps transmission (with a fallback to 5.5, 2 and 1-Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band. 802.11b uses only DSSS. 802.11b was a 1999 ratification to the original 802.11 standard, allowing wireless functionality comparable to Ethernet.

802.11ac Wave 2

802.11ac Wave 2 is an update for the original 802.11ac spec that uses MU-MIMO technology and other advancements to help increase theoretical maximum wireless speeds for the spec to 6.93 Gbps.

802.11ad

802.11ad is a wireless specification under development that will operate in the 60GHz frequency band and offer much higher transfer rates than previous 802.11 specs, with a theoretical maximum transfer rate of up to 7Gbps (Gigabits per second).

802.1X

802.1X is an IEEE standard that uses the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) framework to authenticate devices attempting to connect to the LAN or WLAN. The process involves the use of a supplicant to be authenticated, authenticator, and authentication server. Not to be confused with 802.11x (which is the term used to describe the family of 802.11 standards) 802.1X is an IEEE standard for port-based Network Access Control that allows network administrators to restricted use of IEEE 802 LAN service access points to secure communication between authenticated and authorized devices.

802.11e

A wireless draft standard that defines the Quality of Service (QoS) support for LANs, and is an enhancement to the 802.11a and 802.11b wireless LAN (WLAN) specifications. 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. The Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) certification is based on this amendment.

802.11aa

An 802.11 amendment that added support for robust audio and video streaming through MAC enhancements. It specifies a new category of station called a Stream Classification Service (SCS) station. The SCS implementation is optional for a WMM QoS station.

802.11u

An 802.11 amendment that adds features for mobile communication devices such as phones and tablets.

802.11y

An 802.11 amendment that allows registered stations to operate at a higher power output in the 3650 - 3700 MHz band.

802.11r

An 802.11 amendment that enables roaming between access points. 802.11r, also called Fast Basic Service Set (BSS) Transition, supports VoWi-Fi handoff between access points to enable VoIP roaming on a Wi-Fi network with 802.1X authentication.

802.11g

An 802.11 amendment that operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. It uses ERP-OFDM and earlier technology. It can support data rates of up to 54 Mbps.

802.11n

An 802.11 amendment that operates in the 2.4 ISM and 5 GHz UNII/ISM bands. It uses MIMO, HT-OFDM, and earlier technology. It can support data rates of up to 600 Mbps. 802.11n builds upon previous 802.11 standards by adding multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). 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. 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

An 802.11 amendment that operates in the 5 GHz band. It uses MU-MIMO, beamforming, and 256 QAM technology, up to 8 spatial streams and OFDM modulation. Support is included for data rates up to 6933.3 Mbps. 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. 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.

802.11ae

An 802.11 amendment that provides prioritization of management frames. It defines a new Quality of Service Management Frame (QMF). When the QMF service is used, some management frames may be transmitted using an access category other than the one used for voice (AC_VO). When communication with stations that do not support the QMF service, the station uses access category AC_VO to transmit management frames. When QMF is supported, the beacon frame includes a QMF Policy element.

802.11k

An 802.11 amendment that specifies and defines WLAN characteristics and mechanisms.

802.11w

An 802.11 amendment to increase security for the management frames.

802.11i

An 802.11 amendment, now incorporated into the most recent rollup, which provided security enhancements to the standard and resolved weaknesses in the original WEP encryption solution. It provided for TKIP/RC4 (now deprecated) and CCMP/AES cipher suites and encryption algorithms.

802.11ah

An 802.11 draft that specifies operations in the sub-1 GHz range. Frequencies used vary by regulatory domain. The draft supports 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 MHz channels with OFDM modulation. Also known as Wi-Fi HaLow, 802.11ah is the first Wi-Fi specification to operate in frequency bands below one gigahertz (900 MHz) (S1G), and it has a range of nearly twice that of other Wi-Fi technologies. It's also able to penetrate walls and other barriers considerably better than previous Wi-Fi standards.

802.11ax

An 802.11 draft that will support bi-directional MU-MIMO, higher modulation rates and sub-channelization. It is too early to know the final details of this amendment at the time of writing; however, it is planned to operate in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band.

802.11a

An extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs and provides up to 54-Mbps in the 5GHz band. 802.11a uses an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) encoding scheme rather than FHSS or DSSS.

802.11

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

802.11af

IEEE 802.11af, also referred to as "White-Fi" and "Super Wi-Fi", is an amendment, approved in February 2014, that allows WLAN operation in TV white space spectrum in the VHF and UHF bands between 54 and 790 MHz. It uses cognitive radio technology to transmit on unused TV channels, with the standard taking measures to limit interference for primary users, such as analog TV, digital TV, and wireless microphones. Access points and stations determine their position using a satellite positioning system such as GPS, and use the Internet to query a geolocation database (GDB) provided by a regional regulatory agency to discover what frequency channels are available for use at a given time and position. The physical layer uses OFDM and is based on 802.11ac. The propagation path loss as well as the attenuation by materials such as brick and concrete is lower in the UHF and VHF bands than in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, which increases the possible range. The frequency channels are 6 to 8 MHz wide, depending on the regulatory domain. Up to four channels may be bonded in either one or two contiguous blocks. MIMO operation is possible with up to four streams used for either space-time block code (STBC) or multi-user (MU) operation. The achievable data rate per spatial stream is 26.7 Mbit/s for 6 and 7 MHz channels, and 35.6 Mbit/s for 8 MHz channels. With four spatial streams and four bonded channels, the maximum data rate is 426.7 Mbit/s for 6 and 7 MHz channels and 568.9 Mbit/s for 8 MHz channels.