WLAN Evolution - IEEE 802.11 Standards

WLAN Evolution - IEEE 802.11 Standards!

In this article, we are going to learn about various IEEE 802.11 standards to understand how WLAN has evolved since 1997.

IEEE 802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g also written as 802.11a/b/g  collectively were the initial standards and these met the Wireless LAN requirement with data rates up to 54Mbps and supported 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands. As time passed the data requirement for new devices increased and the demand for higher bandwidth WLAN standards increased.

IEEE 802.11n standard added more throughput up to 600 Mbps (theoretically) but typically was able to provide decent bandwidth up to 300Mbps which was higher than the earlier stands as mentioned above. This was achieved by increasing the channel width using the modulation technique like QAM and Multiple input/multiple output (MIMO)

IEEE 802.11ac standard was developed that uses only a 5 GHz range and provides a very high throughput (VHT) compared to the 802.11n standard that was meeting the demand for a High Throughput (HT) environment. This standard as able to support data rates up to 6.9 Gbps (theoretically) and is also known as Wi-Fi 5.

IEEE 802.11ax standard is the latest and support both 2.4 and 5 GHz with data rates up to 4.8 Gbps. Multiple-user MIMO was introduced here where multiple transmission was possible at the same time. The early version of the 802.11ax standard is also known as Wi-Fi 6.

IEEE 802.11ax extension was developed in 2020 that was able to support data rates up to 7.8 Gbps. This standard was able to support 6 GHz spectrum and 1 Gbps channel width. It is also known as Wi-Fi 6E.

A quick summary is below for reference.


Hope you find this informative.