The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Information technology - Telecommunications and information exchange between systems - Local and metropolitan area networks - Specific requirements Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications -  Computer Society
 N 802.11

Annotation

The scope of this standard is to develop a medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specification for wireless connectivity for fixed, portable, and moving stations within a local area.

Purpose

The purpose of this standard is to provide wireless connectivity to automatic machinery, equipment, or stations that require rapid deployment, which may be portable or hand-held, or which may be mounted on moving vehicles within a local area. This standard also offers regulatory bodies a means of standardizing access to one or more frequency bands for the purpose of local area communication.

Specifically, this standard

— Describes the functions and services required by an IEEE 802.11™-compliant device to operate within ad hoc and infrastructure networks as well as the aspects of station mobility (transition) within those networks.

— Defines the MAC procedures to support the asynchronous MAC service data unit (MSDU) delivery services.

— Defines several PHY signaling techniques and interface functions that are controlled by the IEEE 802.11 MAC.

— Permits the operation of an IEEE 802.11-conformant device within a wireless local area network (LAN) that may coexist with multiple overlapping IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs.

— Describes the requirements and procedures to provide privacy of user information being transferred over the wireless medium (WM) and authentication of IEEE 802.11-conformant devices.