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The first few widely accepted amendments to IEEE 802.11 wireless
networking specifications— namely IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, and IEEE 802.11g—featured
relatively low spectral efficiencies and data rates. Driven by technological advances in signal
processing and communications theory, sustained improvement in spectral
efficiency, coverage, and quality of service has been achieved in IEEE 802.11n
and IEEE 802.11ac.
In particular, progressive system improvement is achieved by
the successive introduction of novel techniques, including orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna
techniques. Some advanced transmission techniques, especially multiuser MIMO
(MU-MIMO) and transmit beamforming, have also helped to boost the performance
of Wi-Fi to gigabit-per-second speed, and they have led to the current state of
the art, namely IEEE 802.11ac in 2.4- and 5-GHz bands, and IEEE 802.11ad in the
60-GHz frequency band.
In my first Standards column, which will appear in the June
2016 issue of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, I will share with you a
few interesting and exciting projects related to both the physical (PHY) layer
and the media access (MAC) layer of wireless local area networks (AN), which
are developed in IEEE 802.11 Working Group under the management of the IEEE802
LAN/MAN Standards Committee, including:
- IEEE 802.11ah, which operates below 1 GHz band and targets
for Internet of Things (IoT) applications
- IEEE 802.11ax, which represents the next generation of Wi-Fi
technology evolution with emphasis on high density scenarios of access points
and stations in both indoor and outdoor deployments, and
- IEEE 802.11ay, which is considered as an extension of IEEE
802.11ad with the aim to further improve the maximum data rate to 20 Gbps
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