Programming & Design
Wireless LANs Speed Up
By Mack Sullivan
Until recently, wireless LANs offered speeds of 1 to 2 Mbps. Because many applications were designed with 10-Mbps Ethernet speeds in mind, the relatively slower speeds of wireless LANs limited the types of applications that could run comfortably over a wireless radio-based network. Soon, this will all change. Approval is expected late in the third quarter of this year for an enhanced IEEE 802.11 standard that will provide 11-Mbps data rates, fundamentally changing the dynamics of wireless LAN
design and usage.
New opportunities, new challenges
The new high-rate standard will provide a tremendous boost to the wireless LAN industry. New data rates mean new applications, and new applications mean new design challenges. The 11-Mbps data rate, which is 500% faster than the IEEE 802.11 standard approved just two years ago, will expand WLAN applications beyond warehouse inventory management, emergency room check-in at hospitals, and rapid check-in at rental car agencies.
Traditional LAN applications will now work as seamlessly as wired Ethernet, and the use of wireless LANs in traditional office computing environments will become much more common.
Although a wide-scale replacement of traditional wired office environments is not on the horizon, for many small companies that are just starting up, stand-alone wireless LANs may make perfect sense. The benefits of wireless in this type of general-purpose marketplace will be many. For example, if properly designed, wireless
LANs should be much easier to install and manage than Ethernet LANs. For IT managers, adds, moves, and changes will be dramatically easier when the need to worry about wiring is removed. Network investments will become company assets, moving with a company as the company grows and relocates — unlike the situation for wired networks.
The home
The home market for wireless LANs is also expected to be large. As the number of homes with two or more computers grows, high-rate WLAN products
will provide a new option for connecting these and other devices within the home. For example, PCs and TVs will communicate with each other, sending Internet data to the TV and sending TV programs to the PC. Moving from 2 to 11 Mbps can change video conferencing (whether in the home or in the office) from a low resolution application with slow update rates to one that provides images much closer to TV quality.
With cable modems and some forms of DSL connections providing data rates of 5 Mbps and
higher, high data rate WLANs will ensure that the home network will not be the bottleneck in Internet access. Peripherals such as a CD-ROM (or DVD) drives and color printers can be used by all members of the family. Saving the cost of recurring monthly charges for multiple Internet telephone line connections will make it easy to justify this type of purchase.
The future
If we are at 11 Mbps today, does that mean we’re headed toward 100-Mbps wireless LANs tomorrow? Future
high-speed WLAN products hold the promise of significant increases in raw data rates, and the ability to deliver throughput to the user. By significantly improving a radio’s ability to handle multipath propagation and interference from other devices, radio designers can potentially do a better job than existing Ethernet networks of approaching their full data rates. Maybe we won’t have 100-Mbps wireless LAN products tomorrow, but with creative designs using digital signal processors and adaptive
equalization, radios of the future will not only deliver data rates above 11 Mbps, but will also transmit bits much more efficiently, minimalizing the difference between a future 100-Mbps wired LAN and a 50-Mbps wireless LAN.
Mack Sullivan is managing director of the Wireless LAN Alliance. He can be reached at
mack@wlana.com
.
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