WIRELESS

NETWORKS (EC8004)

Dr. B.VENKATALAKSHMI Session #03 802.11 Protocol Architecture

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-b-venkatalakshmi-79a7a013/
Figure 14.14 Industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band

14.2
802.11
PROTOCOL 01 OVERVIEW

ARCHITECTURE
02 PHYSICAL LAYER
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW
•Seamless fitting with 802.x networks
•Wireless with wired through Bridges
•Applications feel lower bandwidth and higher
access time
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

MAC Management 

-Association an re-association of station

with AP
-Roaming between APs
- controls authentication mechanisms,
encryption, synchronization of a station
with regard to an access point
- power management to save battery
power
- MAC management also maintains the
MAC management information base
(MIB)
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

PHY management 
- channel tuning
- PHY MIB maintenance

Station Management 
-interacts with both management layers
- is responsible for additional higher
layer functions (e.g., control of bridging
and interaction with the distribution
system in the case of an access point)
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

•PLCP Physical Layer Convergence

Protocol
•PMD  Physical Medium Dependent
• 3 different physical layers: one layer
based on infra red and two layers based
on radio transmission (primarily in the ISM
band at 2.4 GHz, which is available
worldwide).
• All PHY variants include the provision of
the clear channel assessment signal
(CCA).
•This is needed for the MAC mechanisms
controlling medium access and indicates if
the medium is currently idle
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

• FHSS
• DSSS
• IR
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

FHSS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=CkhA7s5GIGc
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

FHSS

•The selection of a particular channel is

achieved by using a pseudo-random
hopping pattern.

•National restrictions also determine

further parameters, e.g., maximum
transmit power is 1 W in the US, 100
mW EIRP (equivalent isotropic radiated
power) in Europe and 10 mW/MHz in
Japan
 802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

•standard specifies Gaussian shaped FSK (frequency shift keying), GFSK, as

modulation for the FHSS PHY.

• For 1 Mbit/s a 2 level GFSK is used (i.e., 1 bit is mapped to one frequency),
•4 level GFSK for 2 Mbit/s (i.e., 2 bits are mapped to one frequency).

•While sending and receiving at 1 Mbit/s is mandatory for all devices, operation
at 2 Mbit/s is optional.

•This facilitated the production of low-cost devices for the lower rate only
•more powerful devices for both transmission rates in the early days of 802.11
802.11 PROTOCOL OVERVIEW
WLAN PHY Frame with FHSS
 WLAN PHY Frame with FHSS
•Synch: a sequence of 80 bits alterning 0 and 1, used by the physical circuits to
select the correct antenna (if more than one are in use), and correct offsets of
frequency and synchronization

• SFD: start frame delimiter consists of a pattern of 16 bits: 0000 1100 1011
1101, used to define the beginning of the frame

•While sending and receiving at 1 Mbit/s is mandatory for all devices, operation
at 2 Mbit/s is optional.

•This facilitated the production of low-cost devices for the lower rate only
•more powerful devices for both transmission rates in the early days of 802.11
 WLAN PHY Frame with FHSS
•Length of word of PLCP PDU (PLW): representing the number of bytes in the
packet, useful to the physical layer to detect correctly the end of the packet.

– Flag of signalization PLCP (PSF): indicating the supported rate going from 1
to 4.5 Mbps with steps of 0.5 Mbps. Even though the standard gives the
combinations of bits for PSF to support eight different rates, only the
modulations for 1 and 2 Mbps have been defined.

– Control error field (HEC): CRC field for error detection of 16 bits (or 32 bits).
The polynomial generator used is G(x) = x16 + x12 + x5 + 1
 WLAN PHY Frame with FHSS
The number of operating channels must be greater than or
equal to 20 and less than 35 slots of 1 MHz in the band
indicated in Table A.2.
 WLAN PHY Frame with DSSS
•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1mxYWvfVWQ
 WLAN PHY Frame with DSSS
•DSSS, spreading is achieved using the 11-chip Barker sequence (+1, –1, +1,
+1, –1, +1, +1, +1, –1, –1, –1)

•IEEE 802.11 DSSS PHY also uses the 2.4 GHz ISM band and offers both 1
and 2 Mbit/s data rates

•The system uses differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK) for 1 Mbit/s
transmission and differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) for 2
Mbit/s as modulation schemes

•All bits transmitted by the DSSS PHY are scrambled with the polynomial s(z) =
z7 + z4 + 1 for DC blocking and whitening of the spectrum.
 WLAN PHY Frame with DSSS
•Synch: it is composed of 128 bits set to «1» and
cooperates to the synchronization of the receiver.

– SFD: start frame delimiter consists of a pattern of

16 bits: 1111 0011 1010 0000, used to define the
beginning of the frame.

The preamble must be transmitted at 1 Mbps with a

DBPSK modulation.
 WLAN PHY Frame with DSSS
•The PLCP header is always transmitted at 1 Mbps. It contains several
fields:

– Signal: this field allows to specify the modulation to use for reaching
the desired rate, having 0A for 1 Mbps with a DBPSK modulation and
14 for 2 Mbps with a DQPSK modulation.

– Service: this field is reserved for future use and must be initialized
to 0. A value of 00 signifies that the unit conforms to the IEEE 802.11
standard.
 WLAN PHY Frame with DSSS
•Length: this field indicates the size of the frame in bytes, ranging from
4 to 8192 bytes.

– Control error field (CRC): CRC field for error detection of 16 bits (or
32 bits). The polynomial generator used is G(x) = x16 + x12 + x5 + 1
 WLAN PHY Frame with IR
Uses near visible light at 850–950 nm.

Infra red light is not regulated

The standard does not require a line-of-sight between sender and

receiver, but should also work with diffuse light.

The maximum range is about 10 m if no sunlight or heat sources

interfere with the transmission.
will only work in buildings, e.g., classrooms, meeting rooms etc

a wall is more than enough to shield one IR based IEEE 802.11

Today, no products are available that offer infra red communication

based on 802.11.