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•White Paper: WLAN Technology And Market Trends

By Psion Teklogix

Currently 802.11g is the most common and widely used WLAN standard. The standard has been around for number of years and has become proven through endless installations by enterprise customers. 802.11g is backward compatible with the older 802.11b standard. Both, 802.11b and 802.11g based systems encounter significant RF interference from microwave ovens and cordless phones. Another issue with 802.11g is that it uses only three non-overlapping channels. This substantially limits overall capacity of 802.11g based network and drives some customers' decision to migrate to 802.11a.

802.11a technology, on the other hand, is much more optimized thanks to availability of many non-overlapping channels and low noise factor in 5 GHz band. High absorption level of 5GHZ band limits 802.11a signal penetration through walls and other objects. Nevertheless, higher transmit power and lower noise provide the overall range that is very comparable or, in some case, better than 802.11b/g range.

There is limited deployment of 802.11a systems due to delays in product development as compared to 802.11b/g. Most likely 802.11a will never become a mainstream WLAN technology, because of upcoming ratification of 802.11n. At the same time, 802.11a has become an important part of PTX WLAN client radio portfolio as many customers want to have a choice of switching from 802.11b/g to 802.11a mode as a way to address capacity limitation and/or RF interference.

Click Here To Download:
•White Paper: WLAN Technology And Market Trends