A Technical Tutorial on the IEEE 802.11 Protocol

A Technical Tutorial on the IEEE 802.11 ProtocolBy Pablo BrennerDirector of Engineering ? copyright BreezeCOM 1997A Technical Tutorial on the IEEE 802.11 Standard 18 July, 1996IntroductionThe purpose of this document is to give technical readers a basic overview of the new 802.11 Standard, insuch a way that they will be able to understand the basic concepts, the principle of operations, and some ofthe reasons behind some of the features and/or components of the Standard.Obviously the document does not cover all the Standard, and does not provide enough information for thereader to implement an 802.11 compliant device (for this purpose the reader should read the Standarditself which is a several hundred pages document).This version of the document addresses mainly Functional and MAC aspects, a detailed description of thePHY layer will be provided in a following document.This version of the document is actualized to Draft 4.0 of the Standard.BreezeCom ? copyright BreezeCOM 1997 Page 2A Technical Tutorial on the IEEE 802.11 Standard 18 July, 1996IEEE 802.11 ArchitectureArchitecture ComponentsAn 802.11 LAN is based on a cellular architecture where the system is subdivided into cells, where eachcell (called Basic Service Set or BSS, in the 802.11 nomenclature) is controlled by a Base Station (calledAccess Point, or in short AP).Even though that a wireless LAN may be formed by a single cell, with a single Access Point, (and as willbe described later, ...