802.11 is a protocol used by the Wireless Local Area Network(WLAN) found and developed by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standard Committee(IEEE 802). 802.11-1997 is the ancester of all the 802.11 family. For the most famous one is 802.11b, it is the first one been widely used. Other members of this big family are extensions or coreelations to the previous standard. 802.11 family operate in the 2.4, 3.6, 5 and 60 GHz frequency bands.
Protocol Detail[]
For the whole journey of 802.11 protocol, all of it's new releasing one is an amendments of the previous one. As a matter of fact I would refer a table from wikipedia to introduce the whole family in a much more clear way as follow.
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This table describe all the detail of the 802.11 family members in specific details, such as release date, working bandwidth, working frequecy, data rate and etc.
Here are some highlights of 802.11.
The 802.11a applied with an OFDM air-interface which makes it's thoughput to approximately mid-20 Mbits/s in realistic.
The 802.11b rapidly conquered the market as it dramatically increase the data rate and remaining a low cost in the mean time compared to the oringinal one.
The 802.11g is backward compatible with 802.11b and uses same modulation scheme, OFDM, as 802.11a.
The 802.11n is a protocol adopt Multiple-Input Multiple-Output(as known as MIMO) which significant improve it's thoughput.
As the telecommunicaiton technology develop rapidly, the 802.11 family is trying to keep up the pace with the market's demand.
