Introduction to Wireless LAN and IEEE 802.

11
A wireless LAN (WLAN or WiFi) is a data transmission system designed to provide location-independent
network access between computing devices by using radio waves rather than a cable infrastructure [IEEE
802.11 Wireless LANs, Technical paper].

In the corporate enterprise, wireless LANs are usually implemented as the final link between the existing wired
network and a group of client computers, giving these users wireless access to the full resources and services
of the corporate network across a building or campus setting.

The widespread acceptance of WLANs depends on industry standardization to ensure product compatibility
and reliability among the various manufacturers.

The 802.11 specification [IEEE Std 802.11 (ISO/IEC 8802-11: 1999)] as a standard for wireless LANS was
ratified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in the year 1997. This version of 802.11
provides for 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps data rates and a set of fundamental signaling methods and other services.
Like all IEEE 802 standards, the 802.11 standards focus on the bottom two levels the ISO model, the physical
layer and link layer (see figure below). Any LAN application, network operating system, protocol, including
TCP/IP and Novell NetWare, will run on an 802.11-compliant WLAN as easily as they run over Ethernet.

Fig 1: "IEEE 802.11 and the ISO Model"

The major motivation and benefit from Wireless LANs is increased mobility. Untethered from conventional
network connections, network users can move about almost without restriction and access LANs from nearly
anywhere.

The other advantages for WLAN include cost-effective network setup for hard-to-wire locations such as older
buildings and solid-wall structures and reduced cost of ownership-particularly in dynamic environments
requiring frequent modifications, thanks to minimal wiring and installation costs per device and user. WLANs
liberate users from dependence on hard-wired access to the network backbone, giving them anytime,
anywhere network access. This freedom to roam offers numerous user benefits for a variety of work
environments, such as:

 Immediate bedside access to patient information for doctors and hospital staff
 Easy, real-time network access for on-site consultants or auditors
 Improved database access for roving supervisors such as production line managers, warehouse
auditors, or construction engineers
 Simplified network configuration with minimal MIS involvement for temporary setups such as trade
shows or conference rooms
 Faster access to customer information for service vendors and retailers, resulting in better service and
improved customer satisfaction
 Location-independent access for network administrators, for easier on-site troubleshooting and
support

IEEE 802.11 Architecture

The difference between a portable and mobile station is that a portable station moves from point to point but is
only used at a fixed point. Mobile stations access the LAN during movement.

When two or more stations come together to communicate with each other, they form a Basic Service Set
(BSS). The minimum BSS consists of two stations. 802.11 LANs use the BSS as the standard building block.

A BSS that stands alone and is not connected to a base is called an Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS) or
is referred to as an Ad-Hoc Network. An ad-hoc network is a network where stations communicate only peer to
peer. There is no base and no one gives permission to talk. Mostly these networks are spontaneous and can
be set up rapidly. Ad-Hoc or IBSS networks are characteristically limited both temporally and spatially.

Fig 1: "Adhoc Mode"

When BSS's are interconnected the network becomes one with infrastructure. 802.11 infrastructure has several
elements. Two or more BSS's are interconnected using a Distribution System or DS. This concept of DS
increases network coverage. Each BSS becomes a component of an extended, larger network. Entry to the DS
is accomplished with the use of Access Points (AP). An access point is a station, thus addressable. So, data
moves between the BSS and the DS with the help of these access points.

Creating large and complex networks using BSS's and DS's leads us to the next level of hierarchy, the
Extended Service Set or ESS. The beauty of the ESS is the entire network looks like an independent basic
service set to the Logical Link Control layer (LLC). This means that stations within the ESS can communicate
or even move between BSS′s transparently to the LLC.

Fig 2: Infrastructure Mode

One of the requirements of IEEE 802.11 is that it can be used with existing wired networks. 802.11 solved this
challenge with the use of a Portal. A portal is the logical integration between wired LANs and 802.11. It also
can serve as the access point to the DS. All data going to an 802.11 LAN from an 802.X LAN must pass
through a portal. It thus functions as bridge between wired and wireless.

The implementation of the DS is not specified by 802.11. Therefore, a distribution system may be created from
existing or new technologies. A point-to-point bridge connecting LANs in two separate buildings could become
a DS.

While the implementation for the DS is not specified, 802.11 does specify the services, which the DS must
support. Services are divided into two sections

1. Station Services (SS)

There are five services provided by the DSS

1. Association
2. Reassociation
3. Disassociation
4. Distribution
5. Integration

The first three services deal with station mobility. If a station is moving within its own BSS or is not moving, the
stations mobility is termed No-transition. If a station moves between BSS's within the same ESS, its mobility is
termed BSS-transition. If the station moves between BSS's of differing ESS's it is ESS transition. A station must
affiliate itself with the BSS infrastructure if it wants to use the LAN. This is done by Associating itself with an
access point. Associations are dynamic in nature because stations move, turn on or turn off. A station can only
be associated with one AP. This ensures that the DS always knows where the station is.

Association supports no-transition mobility but is not enough to support BSS-transition. Enter Reassociation.
This service allows the station to switch its association from one AP to another. Both association and
reassociation are initiated by the station. Disassociation is when the association between the station and the
AP is terminated. This can be initiated by either party. A disassociated station cannot send or receive data.
ESS-transition are not supported. A station can move to a new ESS but will have to reinitiate connections.

Distribution and Integration are the remaining DSS's. Distribution is simply getting the data from the sender to
the intended receiver. The message is sent to the local AP (input AP), then distributed through the DS to the
AP (output AP) that the recipient is associated with. If the sender and receiver are in the same BSS, the input
and out AP's are the same. So the distribution service is logically invoked whether the data is going through the
DS or not. Integration is when the output AP is a portal. Thus, 802.x LANs are integrated into the 802.11 DS.

Station services are:

1. Authentication
2. Deauthentication
3. Privacy
4. MAC Service Data Unit (MSDU) Delivery.

With a wireless system, the medium is not exactly bounded as with a wired system. In order to control access
to the network, stations must first establish their identity. This is much like trying to enter a radio net in the
military.

Before you are acknowledged and allowed to converse, you must first pass a series of tests to ensure that you
are who you say you are. That is really all authentication is. Once a station has been authenticated, it may then
associate itself. The authentication relationship may be between two stations inside an IBSS or to the AP of the
BSS. Authentication outside of the BSS does not take place.

There are two types of authentication services offered by 802.11. The first is Open System Authentication. This
means that anyone who attempts to authenticate will receive authentication. The second type is Shared Key
Authentication. In order to become authenticated the users must be in possession of a shared secret. The
shared secret is implemented with the use of the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) privacy algorithm. The
shared secret is delivered to all stations ahead of time in some secure method (such as someone walking
around and loading the secret onto each station).

Deauthentication is when either the station or AP wishes to terminate a stations authentication. When this
happens the station is automatically disassociated. Privacy is an encryption algorithm, which is used so that
other 802.11 users cannot eavesdrop on your LAN traffic. IEEE 802.11 specifies Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP) as an optional algorithm to satisfy privacy. If WEP is not used then stations are "in the clear" or "in the
red", meaning that their traffic is not encrypted. Data transmitted in the clear are called plaintext. Data
transmissions, which are encrypted, are called ciphertext. All stations start "in the red" until they are
authenticated. MSDU delivery ensures that the information in the MAC service data unit is delivered between
the medium access control service access points.

The bottom line is this, authentication is basically a network wide password. Privacy is whether or not
encryption is used. Wired Equivalent Privacy is used to protect authorized stations from eavesdroppers. WEP
is reasonably strong. The algorithm can be broken in time. The relationship between breaking the algorithm is
directly related to the length of time that a key is in use. So, WEP allows for changing of the key to prevent
brute force attack of the algorithm. WEP can be implemented in hardware or in software. One reason that WEP
is optional is because encryption may not be exported from the United States. This allows 802.11 to be a
standard outside the U.S. albeit without the encryption.

 Physical Layer
 Data Link Layer 
Physical Layer
The three physical layers originally defined in 802.11 included two spread-spectrum radio techniques and a
diffuse infrared specification.

The radio-based standards operate within the 2.4 GHz ISM band. These frequency bands are recognized by
international regulatory agencies radio operations. As such, 802.11-based products do not require user
licensing or special training.

Spread-spectrum techniques, in addition to satisfying regulatory requirements, increase reliability, boost

The original 802.11 wireless standard defines data rates of 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps via radio waves using
frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) or direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS). It is important to
note that FHSS and DSSS are fundamentally different signaling mechanisms and will not interoperate with one
another.

Using the frequency hopping technique, the 2.4 GHz band is divided into 75 1-MHz subchannels. The sender
and receiver agree on a hopping pattern, and data is sent over a sequence of the subchannels. Each
conversation within the 802.11 network occurs over a different hopping pattern, and the patterns are designed
to minimize the chance of two senders using the same subchannel simultaneously.

FHSS techniques allow for a relatively simple radio design, but are limited to speeds of no higher than 2 Mbps.
This limitation is driven primarily by FCC (Federal Communications Commission USA) regulations that restrict
subchannel bandwidth to 1 MHz. These regulations force FHSS systems to spread their usage across the
entire 2.4 GHz band, meaning they must hop often, which leads to a high amount of hopping overhead.

In contrast, the direct sequence signaling technique divides the 2.4 GHz band into 14 22-MHz channels.
Adjacent channels overlap one another partially, with three of the 14 being completely non-overlapping. Data is
sent across one of these 22 MHz channels without hopping to other channels.

To compensate for noise on a given channel, a technique called “chipping” is used. Each bit of user data is
converted into a series of redundant bit patterns called “chips.” The inherent redundancy of each chip
combined with spreading the signal across the 22 MHz channel provides for a form of error checking and
correction; even if part of the signal is damaged, it can still be recovered in many cases, minimizing the need
for retransmissions.

Data Link Layer

802.11 uses the same 802.2 LLC and 48-bit addressing as other 802 LANs, allowing for very simple bridging
from wireless to IEEE wired networks, but the MAC is unique to WLANs.

The 802.11 MAC is very similar in concept to 802.3, in that it is designed to support multiple users on a shared
medium by having the sender sense the medium before accessing it.

For 802.3 Ethernet LANs, the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol
regulates how Ethernet stations establish access to the wire and how they detect and handle collisions that
occur when two or more devices try to simultaneously communicate over the LAN. In an 802.11 WLAN,
collision detection is not possible due to what is known as the “near/far” problem: to detect a collision, a station
must be able to transmit and listen at the same time, but in radio systems the transmission drowns out the
ability of the station to “hear” a collision.

To account for this difference, 802.11 uses a slightly modified protocol known as Carrier Sense Multiple Access
with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) or the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). CSMA/CA attempts to
avoid collisions by using explicit packet acknowledgment (ACK), which means an ACK packet is sent by the
receiving station to confirm that the data packet arrived intact.

CSMA/CA works as follows. A station wishing to transmit senses the air, and, if no activity is detected, the
station waits an additional, randomly selected period of time and then transmits if the medium is still free. If the
packet is received intact, the receiving station issues an ACK frame that, once successfully received by the
sender, completes the process. If the ACK frame is not detected by the sending station, either because the
original data packet was not received intact or the ACK was not received intact, a collision is assumed to have
occurred and the data packet is transmitted again after waiting another random amount of time.

CSMA/CA thus provides a way of sharing access over the air. This explicit ACK mechanism also handles
interference and other radio related problems very effectively. However, it does add some overhead to 802.11
that 802.3 does not have, so that an 802.11 LAN will always have slower performance than an equivalent
Ethernet LAN.

Another MAC-layer problem specific to wireless is the “hidden node” issue, in which two stations on opposite
sides of an access point can both “hear” activity from an access point, but not from each other, usually due to
distance or an obstruction.

Fig 1: RTS/CTS Procedure eliminates the “Hidden Node” Problem

To solve this problem, 802.11 specifies an optional Request to Send/Clear to Send (RTS/CTS) protocol at the
MAC layer. When this feature is in use, a sending station transmits an RTS and waits for the access point to
reply with a CTS. Since all stations in the network can hear the access point, the CTS causes them to delay
any intended transmissions, allowing the sending station to transmit and receive a packet acknowledgment
without any chance of collision.

Since RTS/CTS adds additional overhead to the network by temporarily reserving the medium, it is typically
used only on the largest-sized packets, for which retransmission would be expensive from a bandwidth
standpoint.

Finally, the 802.11 MAC layer provides for two other robustness features: CRC checksum and packet
fragmentation. Each packet has a CRC checksum calculated and attached to ensure that the data was not
corrupted in transit. This is different from Ethernet, where higher-level protocols such as TCP handle error
checking. Packet fragmentation allows large packets to be broken into smaller units when sent over the air,
which is useful in very congested environments or when interference is a factor, since larger packets have a
better chance of being corrupted. This technique reduces the need for retransmission in many cases and thus
improves overall wireless network performance. The MAC layer is responsible for reassembling fragments
received, rendering the process transparent to higher level protocols.
Support for Time-Bounded Data
Time-bounded data such as voice and video is supported in the 802.11 MAC specification through the Point
Coordination Function (PCF). As opposed to the DCF, where control is distributed to all stations, in PCF mode
a single access point controls access to the media. If a BSS is set up with PCF enabled, time is spliced
between the system being in PCF mode and in DCF (CSMA/CA) mode. During the periods when the system is
in PCF mode, the access point will poll each station for data, and after a given time move on to the next station.
No station is allowed to transmit unless it is polled, and stations receive data from the access point only when
they are polled. Since PCF gives every station a turn to transmit in a predetermined fashion, a maximum
latency is guaranteed. A downside to PCF is that it is not particularly scalable, in that a single point needs to
have control of media access and must poll all stations, which can be ineffective in large networks

802.11 Standards
The most critical issue affecting WLAN demand has been limited
throughput.

The data rates supported by the original 802.11 standards are too slow to support most general business
requirements and slowed the adoption of WLANs.

Recognizing the critical need to support higher data-transmission rates, the IEEE ratified the 802.11b standard
(also known as 802.11 High Rate) for transmissions of up to 11 Mbps.

After 802.11b one more standard 802.11a has been ratified and in January 2002 the draft specification of
another 802.11g has been approved. 802.11g is expected to be ratified till early 2003.

The letters after the number "802.11" tell us the order in which the standards were first proposed [Emerging
Technology: Wireless Lan Standards]. This means that the "new" 802.11a is actually older than the currently
used 802.11b, which just happened to be ready first because it was based on relatively simple technology-
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), as opposed to 802.11a's Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM). The more complex technology provides a higher data rate: 802.11b can reach
11Mbits/sec, while 802.11a can reach 54Mbits/sec.

 IEEE 802.11b
 IEEE 802.11a
 IEEE 802.11g

IEEE 802.11b
With 802.11b WLANs, mobile users can get Ethernet levels of performance, throughput, and availability.

The basic architecture, features, and services of 802.11b are defined by the original 802.11 standard. The
802.11b specification affects only the physical layer, adding higher data rates and more robust connectivity.

The key contribution of the 802.11b addition to the wireless LAN standard was to standardize the physical layer
support of two new speeds,5.5 Mbps and 11 Mbps.

To accomplish this, DSSS had to be selected as the sole physical layer technique for the standard since, as
frequency hopping cannot support the higher speeds without violating current FCC regulations. The implication
is that 802.11b systems will interoperate with 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps 802.11 DSSS systems, but will not work with
1 Mbps and 2 Mbps 802.11 FHSS systems.
The original 802.11 DSSS standard specifies an 11-bit chipping?called a Barker sequence?to encode all data
sent over the air. Each 11-chip sequence represents a single data bit (1 or 0), and is converted to a waveform,
called a symbol, that can be sent over the air.

These symbols are transmitted at a 1 MSps (1 million symbols per second) symbol rate using technique called
Binary Phase Shift Keying BPSK). In the case of 2 Mbps, a more sophisticated implementation called
Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) is used; it doubles the data rate available in BPSK, via improved
efficiency in the use of the radio bandwidth. To increase the data rate in the 802.11b standard, advanced
coding techniques are employed.

Rather than the two 11-bit Barker sequences, 802.11b specifies Complementary Code Keying (CCK), which
consists of a set of 64 8-bit code words. As a set, these code words have unique mathematical properties that
allow them to be correctly distinguished from one another by a receiver even in the presence of substantial
noise and multipath interference (e.g., interference caused by receiving multiple radio reflections within a
building).

The 5.5 Mbps rate uses CCK to encode 4 bits per carrier, while the 11 Mbps rate encodes 8 bits per carrier.
Both speeds use QPSK as the modulation technique and signal at 1.375 MSps. This is how the higher data
rates are obtained. To support very noisy environments as well as extended range, 802.11b WLANs use
dynamic rate shifting, allowing data rates to be automatically adjusted to compensate for the changing nature of
the radio channel. Ideally, users connect at the full 11 Mbps rate.

However when devices move beyond the optimal range for 11 Mbps operation, or if substantial interference is
present, 802.11b devices will transmit at lower speeds, falling back to 5.5, 2, and 1 Mbps. Likewise, if the
device moves back within the range of a higher-speed transmission, the connection will automatically speed up
again. Rate shifting is a physical layer mechanism transparent to the user and the upper layers of the protocol
stack.

One of the more significant disadvantages of 802.11b is that the frequency band is crowded, and subject to
interference from other networking technologies, microwave ovens, 2.4GHz cordless phones (a huge market),
and Bluetooth [ Wireless Standards Up in the Air]. There are drawbacks to 802.11b, including lack of
interoperability with voice devices, and no QoS provisions for multimedia content. Interference and other
limitations aside, 802.11b is the clear leader in business and institutional wireless networking and is gaining
share for home applications as well

IEEE 802.11a
802.11a, is much faster than 802.11b, with a 54Mbps maximum data rate operates in the 5GHz frequency
range and allows eight simultaneous channels [Emerging Technology: Wireless Lan Standards].

802.11a uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), a new encoding scheme that offers
benefits over spread spectrum in channel availability and data rate.

Channel availability is significant because the more independent channels that are available, the more scalable
the wireless network becomes. 802.11a uses OFDM to define a total of 8 non-overlapping 20 MHz channels
across the 2 lower bands. By comparison, 802.11b uses 3 non-overlapping channels.

All wireless LANs use unlicensed spectrum; therefore they're prone to interference and transmission errors. To
reduce errors, both types of 802.11 automatically reduce the Physical layer data rate. IEEE 802.11b has three
lower data rates (5.5, 2, and 1Mbit/sec), and 802.11a has seven (48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 9, and 6Mbits/sec). Higher
(and more) data rates aren't 802.11a's only advantage. It also uses a higher frequency band, 5GHz, which is
both wider and less crowded than the 2.4GHz band that 802.11b shares with cordless phones, microwave
ovens, and Bluetooth devices.

The wider band means that more radio channels can coexist without interference. Each radio channel
corresponds to a separate network, or a switched segment on the same network. One big disadvantage is that
it is not directly compatible with 802.11b, and requires new bridging products that can support both types of
networks. Other clear disadvantages are that 802.11a is only available in half the bandwidth in Japan (for a
maximum of four channels), and it isn't approved for use in Europe, where HiperLAN2 is the standard.