Piscataway, N.J. — The IEEE has announced that its Standards Board has ratified the IEEE 802.11n-2009 amendment that define mechanisms to provide significantly improved data rates and ranges for wireless local area networks (WLANs).
This new amendment to the IEEE 802.11 base standard is designed to help the data communications industry address the increasing demands placed on enterprise, home and public WLANs with the rise of higher bandwidth file transfers and next-generation multimedia applications. WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 are widely deployed, with more than 1 million units shipping per day, said IEEE.
The IEEE 802.11 standard defines how to design interoperable WLAN equipment that provides a variety of capabilities including a wide range of data rates, quality of service, reliability, range optimization, device link options, network management and security.
The 560-page 802.11n amendment (Information Technology — Telecommunications and information exchange between systems — Local and metropolitan area networks — Specific requirements Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications Amendment 5: Enhancements for Higher Throughput-2009) will enable rollout of significantly more scalable WLANs that deliver 10-fold-greater data rates than previously defined while ensuring co-existence with legacy systems and security implementations, according to IEEE.
Publication of the amendment is scheduled for mid-October.