The Standards of WLAN - Essay Example

It is a set of standards determined by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) for Wi-Fi-supporting network devices. The standardizing committee generally defined how these Wi-Fi devices are projected and the way these devices should communicate with one another.
Possible IEEE 802.11 amendments that can be used for our new system are as follows:
• 802.11a
Pros – it is fast at the highest speed. Signal interference with other devices is prevented due to regulated frequencies.
Cons – it is a costly solution. Its signal range is very short and can be easily obstructed.

• 802.11b
Pros – it is very cheap to install. It has a good signal range that cannot be easily obstructed.
Cons – its main disadvantage is the slowest maximum speed. Other devices like microwaves etc., could create interfere with the free frequency band.

• 802.11g
Pros – like 802.11a it has a high data rate. It has an improved range of signals and cannot easily block.
Cons – its asking price is more than 802.11b. Home electrical devices might interfere with the free signal frequency

• 802.11n
Pros – Its speed is the best of all of the above amendments. Its signal range is also the best. Its main advantage is that it is more opposed to the interference of signals from external sources. It has backward compatibility.
Cons – It is not a cheap solution. (Briere, Hurley, & Ferris, 2013, p. 48-49) Its multiple signal usage could highly interfere with close 802.11b/g-based networks.
Preferred amendment:
For the implementation of WLAN, my preferred amendment is 802.11n. It is also known as “Wireless-N".(Rathbone, 2012) It is the latest 802.11 amendment that offers a high-speed data transfer rate with improved signal ranges than the previous amendments. The verified speeds for 802.11n devices are 7 times faster than 802.11g while communicating at 300 Mbps or more in real-world scenarios. Evidence proved it as the first Wi-Fi 802.11 amendment that has challenged the 100 Mbps wired Ethernet architectures.
802.11n supporting devices are designed for better performance at long distances, which means that if a portable device is 300 feet away from the Wi-Fi access point it will still retain its actual data rate. Distinguishing it from older versions of 802.11, where data rate and communication with the access points tend to be weakened when a portable device is that far.
As we know that 802.11n has been standardized and groups in the wireless industry such as the Wi-Fi Alliance have been forcing backward compatibility among 802.11n and its previous version supporting devices – this has reduced the risk of buying devices that may not communicate with each other or with older hardware.

The reason behind this is, some of these devices transmit frequency in a band that is as wide as 802.11, while each one of these gives out power that is equivalent to or sometimes higher than 802.11 devices. As we know that 802.11n is inherent in the MIMO technology. (Madisetti, 2010, p. 27-28) One solution can make it possible if we use a 3×3 802.11n transmitter. It will help in a way that all the interferences can disturb one stream while still, two parallel streams are present for its receiver. Read More