Introduction to Wireless Networking

Module-01
Overview of Wireless Standards, Organizations and
Technology

Jerry Bernardini
Community College of Rhode Island

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 Presentation Reference Material

• CWNA Certified Wireless Network

Administration Official Study Guide
(PWO-104), David Coleman, David Westcott,
2009, Chapter-1
• Wireless Networking in the Developing
World http://wndw.net

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 Abbreviated Wireless Network History ??dates

• 1830: Professor Joseph Henry transmitted the first practical

electrical signal.
• 1880: Maxwell’s Equations
• 1905: Marconi
• 1920: Radio Receivers
• 1935: Television
• 1941: Radar
• 1958: Satellite
• 1970: ALOHAnet
• 1990: Internet
• 1998: WLAN

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 Why Study Wireless Networks? A Partial List

• Cordless phones
• Wireless Voice over IP phones
• Wireless print servers
• Wireless access points, routers, and bridges
• Radio Frequency Identification devices
• Wireless presentation gateways
• Wireless conferencing systems
• Laptop computers, PDAs, and other mobile wireless client
• device

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 Wireless Industry Guided by Three Categories
of Organizations
• Regulation- Boundaries of Operation
– Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
– European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
• Power limits and Frequencies

• Standardization- How systems work together

– Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• 802.11 a, b, g, n

• Compatibility – Tests for interoperability

– Wi-Fi Alliance
• If you buy Wi-Fi certified gear it work with other Wi-Fi gear

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 FCC - Federal Communications Commission

• Regulatory Bodies – City, State, Country

• FCC- Born in 1934 to regulate radio, television, cable,
satellite and wire communications
• FCC regulates
– Radio frequencies
– Output power levels
– Indoor and Outdoor usage
• Every country has regulatory bodies

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 FCC Wireless Bands
• 1985:Industry, Scientific and Medical Industrial
License-Free Bands – ISM Bands
– 900 MHz band, (900 to 928 MHz range)
– 2.4 GHz band, (2.4 to 2.483 GHz range)
– 5 GHz band, (5.725 to 5.850 GHz range)
• 1997: Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure
U-NII bands
– 5.15 to 5.25 GHz
– 5.25 to 5.35 GHz
– 5.725 to 5.825 GHz

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 FCC Unlicensed Bands

Advantages Disadvantages
•No licenses required •Everyone can use the
•No Fees bands
•No Permits •Interference between
•Comply with rules and users
build anything •Bandwidth Contention
•First-come-first –serve
•Interference from late-
comers

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 FCC Regulates Frequencies

• Frequencies are grouped into bands

– Wireless LAN bands include: (Hz = Hertz)

Frequency Band Total Bandwidth License-Free Band

2400–2500 MHz 100 MHz ISM

5.15–5.25 GHz 100 MHz U-NII

5.25–5.35 GHz 100 MHz U-NII

5.470–5.725 GHz 255 MHz U-NII

5.725–5.825 GHz 100 MHz U-NII

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 FCC Power Output Limits-U-NI Bands
Band Power Output Limits Area Usage

U-NII 5.15–5.25 GHz 40 mW Restricted to indoor operations

U-NII 5.25–5.35 GHz 200 mW Indoor/outdoor

U-NII 5.470–5.725 GHz 200 mW Indoor/outdoor

U-NII 5.725–5.825 GHz 800 mW Higher output power assumes

outdoor operations

mw = 1/1000 watt

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 Non-USA Standard Organizations

• OfCom-Office of Communication –United Kingdom

• MIC- Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications-Japan
• ARIB-Association of Radio and Businesses – Japan
• ACMA-Australian Communications and Media
Authority

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 International Telecommunications Union
Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R)
• 1947: United Nations creates ITU-R to:
– Promote cooperation and technical development
• ITU-R maintains a database of frequencies with five
administrative regions
– Region A: The Americas
– Region B: Western Europe
– Region C: Eastern Europe
– Region D: Africa
– Region E: Asia and Australia

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 Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers - IEEE (Eye-triple-E)
• World’s leading non-profit professional organization
for the advancement of technology
• Mission –
– promote “the engineering process of creating, developing, integrating,
sharing, and applying knowledge about electronics and information
technologies and sciences for the benefit of humanity and the
profession.”
• 350,000 individual members in 150 countries.
• Nearly 900 active standards with 700 under
development.

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 IEEE Wireless Standards

• IEEE 802 project is the most important with multiple

working groups
– IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet)
– IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN)
– IEEE 802.16 WiMAX
– IEEE 802.16 Mobile Broadband
• Most of this course will deal with IEEE 802.11

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 IEEE 802.11 Standards

• 1997: First 802.11 ratified (802.11-1997)

• Three ways of implementing a physical
communications layer (PHY)
– Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS)
– Direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS)
– Infrared communications (not implemented extensively)
• All operate at 1Mbps and 2Mbps
• To be covered in depth is subsequence lessons

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 IEEE 802.11 Amendments

• IEEE 802.11a – OFDM, 5 GHz U-NII, 54 Mbps

• IEEE 802.11b – DSSS, 2.4 Mhz ISM band, 11 Mbps
• IEEE 802.11c – Bridging operation
• IEEE 802.11d – regularity specifications
• IEEE 802.11e – Quality of Service (QoS)
• IEEE 802.11F- access point re-association
• IEEE 802.11g – DSSS/OFDM, 2.4 Mhz, 54 Mbps
• IEEE 802.11h – Dynamic frequency, power control
• IEEE 802.11i – important security enhancements
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 IEEE 802.11 Amendments

• IEEE 802.11j – 4.9-5 Mhz band in Japan

• IEEE 802.11k – channel management above 5 Mhz
• IEEE 802.11n –Important 100 Mbps plus WLAN
• IEEE 802.11p –Intelligent Transportation Systems
• IEEE 802.11r – Roaming amendment
• IEEE 802.11s – Extended Mesh network interoperate
• IEEE 802.11T – measurement and test conditions
• IEEE 802.11u – handoffs between WiMax and WLAN
• IEEE 802.11v – device management
• IEEE 802.11w – improved management frames
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 More IEEE Standards

• IEEE 802.1X – port-based authentication for security

• IEEE 802.3-2005 Clause 33 – defines power over
Ethernet (PoE)
• IEEE 802.1D – bridging priority
• IEEE 802.1Q – priority tagging and VLAN FOR QoS

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 IETF – International Engineering Task Force
• Primarily a volunteer organization
• The most important standards organization for the
Internet operation
• Operates on the basis of the Request-For-Comment
(RFC)
– IETF issues an RFC in a technical issue
– After a period of time all responses to the RFC are gather and voted on
• WLAN RFC 3748, RFC 2865 are important for wireless
– RFC 3748 - WLAN security
– RFC 2865 -security and the use of RADIUS server

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 Wi-Fi Alliance
• Certification organization for testing and
interoperability
• Eight basic Wi-Fi CERTIFIEDTM programs
• Wi-Fi is just a marketing name; it does not stand for
anything
• Before October 2002 know as the Wireless Ethernet
Compatibility Alliance (WECA)
• Most commercial products will have a Wi-Fi logo
• www.wi-fi.org for more information

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 Wi-Fi CERTIFIEDTM Programs
• IEEE 802.11 baseline – meets up to IEEE 802.11n
• Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) – based upon IEEE 802.11i
• Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM)- QoS for various applications
• WMM Power Save(WMM-PS) – specifications to save battery
power
• Wi-Fi- Protection -Security – Simplified and automated WPA
and WPA2 security setup
• CWG-RF multimedia- defines performance for cellular radios
and handsets
• Voice Personal-application – support for personal and
business voice applications

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 Communications Models

• Models are design, management, interoperability

and learning
• OSI Model - seven layers- can be abstract but is very
commonly used
• Core-Distribution-Access Model – a useful model for
wireless networking
• TCP/IP Model - Four layers – good for networks built
around TCP/IP

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 OSI Model

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 Core – Distribution - Access

• Core Layer – Does not route or manipulate traffic

– High speed traffic – think superhighway
– Backbone of network
– High speed switches and routers
• Distribution Layer – Routes or directs traffic other
nodes
– Medium speed traffic – think city traffic
– Routers and Bridges
• Access Layer – directs traffic to end user
– Relative slower traffic – think local street traffic
– Access Points and Switches

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 Core – Distribution – Access Details

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 TCP/IP Model

(Transport)

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 TCP/IP and OSI Model Maping

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 Modulation

• Carrier signal is a continuous electrical signal

– Carries no information
• Three types of modulations enable carrier signals to
carry information
– Height of signal
– Frequency of signal
– Relative starting point
• Modulation can be done on analog or digital
transmissions

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 Analog and Digital Modulation
• Analog Transmission use analog carrier signals and analog
modulation.
• Digital Transmission use analog carrier signals and digital
modulation.
• Modem (MOdulator/DEModulator): Used when digital
signals must be transmitted over analog medium
– On originating end, converts distinct digital signals into
continuous analog signal for transmission
– On receiving end, reverse process performed
• WLANs use digital modulation of analog signals (carrier signal)

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 Analog vs. Digital Transmissions

Analog Signal = A signal that has continuously varying voltages, frequencies, or

phases. All amplitude values are present from minimum to maximum signal levels.

Digital Signal = A signal in which information is carried in a limited number of

different discrete states or levels; High/Low, One/Zero, 1/0

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Frequency and Period

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 Analog Modulation

• Amplitude: Height of carrier wave

• Amplitude modulation (AM): Changes amplitude so
that highest peaks of carrier wave represent 1 bit
while lower waves represent 0 bit
• Frequency modulation (FM): Changes number of
waves representing one cycle
– Number of waves to represent 1 bit more than number of waves to
represent 0 bit
• Phase modulation (PM): Changes starting point of
cycle
– When bits change from 1 to 0 bit or vice versa

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 Digital Modulation
• Advantages over analog modulation:
– Better use of bandwidth
– Requires less power
– Better handling of interference from other signals
– Error-correcting techniques more compatible with other digital
systems
• Unlike analog modulation, changes occur in discrete
steps using binary signals
– Uses same three basic types of modulation as analog

Amplitude shift keying (ASK)

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 Digital Modulation

Frequency shift keying (FSK)

Phase shift keying (PSK)

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