IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion [Paperback]

Al Petrick (Author), Bob O'Hara (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0738144495 | ISBN-13: 978-0738144498 | Publication Date: January 24, 2005 | Edition: 2

The first generation 802.11 wireless market, once struggling to expand, has spread from largely vertical applications such as healthcare, point of sale, and inventory management to become much more broad as a general networking technology being deployed in offices, schools, hotel guest rooms, airport departure areas, airplane cabins, entertainment venues, coffee shops, restaurants, and homes. This has led to the tremendous growth of new sources of IEEE 802.11 devices. IEEE 802.11 equipment is now moving into its second stage, where the wireless LAN is being treated as a large wireless communication system. As a system, there is more to consider than simply the communication over the air between a single access point and the associated mobile devices. This has lead to innovative changes in the equipment that makes up a wireless LAN. The IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer’s Companion, Second Edition is for the system network architects, hardware engineers and software engineers at the heart of this second stage in the evolution of 802.11 wireless LANs and for those designers that will take 802.11 to the next stage.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

RELATED PRODUCTS: Wireless Communication Standards: A Study of IEEE 802.11, 802.15, and 802.16 by Todor Cooklev; Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks: Enabling Wireless Sensors with IEEE 802.15.4 by Jose Gutierrez, et al.; Wireless Multimedia: A Guide to the IEEE 802.15.3 Standard by James Gilb

About the Author

Bob O'Hara is a co-founder of Airespace, a venture-funded startup company that is leading the IEEE 802.11 industry into the second stage of wireless local area network (WLAN) evolution. He is actively involved in the development of networking, telecommunications, and computing standards and products. His areas of expertise are network and communication protocols and their implementation, operating systems, system specification and integration, standards development, cryptography and its application, strategy development, and product definition. Mr. O'Hara has been involved with the development of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard since 1992. He was the technical editor of that standard and chairman of the revisions and regulatory extensions tasks groups. He is currently chairman of the maintenance and task group. In 2004, he was selected of one of the fifty most powerful people in networking by Network World.

Al Petrick is vice president of marketing and business development at WiDeFi, a fabless semiconductor company developing 802.11 WiFi^® semiconductors for the wireless consumer electronics market. Mr. Petrick's experience includes over 23 years of combined marketing and systems engineering in wireless communications and semiconductor technology. Prior to WiDeFi, he held executive management marketing and business development positions at Icefyre and Intersil. At Intersil, now Conexant, formally Harris Semiconductor, he pioneered the PRISM WLAN chipset from inception into a successful Wi-Fi product line. Mr. Petrick serves as vice chairman of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN Working Group. He has published various marketing and technical papers on wireless communications for leading wireless trade publications, marketing analysts, and financial analysts. Mr Petrick co-authored with Bob O'Hara  the first edition of the IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion. He serves on a number of advisory boards for Wi-Fi product companies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Standards Information Network; 2 edition (January 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738144495
• ISBN-13: 978-0738144498
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,069,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise 802.11 protocol overview, no fluff, poorly written, March 8, 2002

By 

William Brasier (Los Gatos, Ca. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion (Paperback)

If you are an engineer with need to quickly understand the details of the 802.11 protocol, but do not want to plow through hundreds of pages of the IEEE specification, this book is for you. It is a good concise treatment of the details of the protocol. It is written for practicing telecommunications engineers. It is not 'wireless 101' and it is not for someone who wants to know how to set up a home or enterprise 802.11 network. It does not describe what unratified (as of this writing) 802.11e, 802.11 g, 802.11i specs are. It does cover the 802.11a and 802.11b phy layer descriptions.

Unfortunately, the lack of a detailed Table of Contents, lack of any index at all, a super sparce list of acronyms hurt the readability. This also makes its use as a quick reference not so quick. I also think that the figures are too simple and that better use of detailed figures would help the book considerably. However, the actual IEEE spec has very good figures. This book and the IEEE spec are side by side companions on my bookshelf and complement each other nicely.

I have found other books to date on the subject much too soft as far as technical detail on the protocol mechanisms. The authors participated in the design of 802.11 and know how to present the most salient features for embedded engineers. If you want a concise explanation of the 802.11 spec, and already have a fundamental understanding of how ethernet works, this is the book for you. So, I give it 4/5 stars on applicability of this content, but not for literary style and construct.

If you are more interested in what is a wireless LAN, what affects the signal propagation, how do you plan to put in an 802.11 LAN in your enterprise, and a little overview on the protocol, buy the James T. Geier book

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All experienced Wi-Fi professionals should have this book, April 14, 2005

By 

Criss Hyde (Leesburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion (Paperback)

I received my copy of the IEEE 802.11 Handbook 2nd edition on April 1st, 2005. All experienced Wi-Fi professionals should have this book and those new to Wi-Fi should learn the basics elsewhere.

What follows is a comparison of the two editions.

The same two authors are credited with authoring both editions. Both have significant IEEE 802.11 standards committee histories and business involvements. The authors dedicated the 1st edition to their parents and the 2nd to their wives. Times change.

The 2nd has twice as many pages, and is twice as thick. It is an extra inch wide and tall but with a larger font that results in the same amount of information on each page. Thus the content looks to have doubled.

All the old chapters are carried forward with nominal changes. The 2nd has a very modest glossary and a decent index; the 1st had neither.

New chapters in the 2nd include 802.11i, 802.11e, 802.11h, 802.11d, 802.11F, 802.11j, 802.11g, and 802.11n, in that order but mingled with the old chapters. The entirely new chapters are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, and 15.

Virtually all the graphics of the 1st are carried forward in the 2nd and most became grainier. Most typos and awkward English in the 1st are corrected in the 2nd.

Someone formatting the 2nd went overboard globally replacing words and phrases with acronyms or abbreviations. For example all instances of "station" became "STA" regardless of context.

Most other changes are additional paragraphs or additional sentences added to existing paragraphs. Rarely is a sentence modified. Here are the 2nd edition pages that have changes in the chapters carried over from the 1st: 5, 14, 26, 27, 33-34, 40, 52-55, 57, 60-72, 74-86, 89, 92-93, 223, 225-226, 228, 239-240, 258-260, 267, 271, 273, 275-284, 289-290, 344-347. If you have a 1st edition you can match the paragraphs up with the 2nd edition and the new material will jump off the page.

The result is a mix of voices from 1999 and 2005. Understanding this makes it easier to forgive a leftover remark from 1999 that would be a glaring mistake if penned in 2005.

The Handbook is seldom technically wrong. The 1st edition introduced language not found in the IEEE 802.11 standard that can both help and hinder accurate understanding of the technology. None of this was improved on in the 2nd edition.

The 1st edition was my only 802.11 resource for several years. When I began reading the IEEE 802.11 document and its amendments I had to stop reading the Handbook in order to not confuse the two. Perhaps one day I can write about what I would wish to see changed in a third edition.

I found the 2nd edition new chapters to be very informative and alone worth the price of the book. So enjoy -- but be careful.

I hope this helps. /Criss Hyde
_________________
Freelance Technical Editor for The CWNP Program

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I really miss the list of abbreviations, July 7, 2000

By 

F.Wiarda (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 802.11 Handbook a Designers Companion (Pdf) (Microfilm)

Without a list of abreviations, the book is unreadable. It is full with them, and the meaning of an abrevaition is given only upon it's first appearance in the text.

After I made for myself a list of abreviations (see below), the book became readable, and gives a good overview of the IEEE 802.11 standard.

ACK=ACKnowledge; AGW=Additive Wite Gaussian; AID=Association IDentifier; AP=Access Point; ASN=Abstract Syntax Notation; ATIM=Announcement Traffic Indication Message; BER=Bit Error Rate; BPSK=Binary Phase Shift Keying; BSA=Business Software Alliance; BSS=Basic Service Set; BSSID=Basic Service Set IDentifier; CCITT=Comité Consultatif International Télégraphique et Téléphonique; CCK=Complementary Code Keying; CDMA=Code Division Multiple Access; CF=Contention Free; CFP=Contention Free Period; CSMA=Carier Sense Multiple Access; CSMA/CA=Carier Sense Multiple Access with Colission Avoidance; CRC=Cyclic Redundancy Check; CTS=Clear To Send; CW=Continues Wave;

DA=Destination Address; DBPSK=Differential Binary Phase Shift Keying; DCF=Distributed Coordination Function; DHCP=Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol; DIFS=Distributed InterFrame Space; DQPSK=Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying; DS=Distribution System; DSSS=Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum; DTIM=Delivery Traffic Indication Map; EIFS=Extended InterFrame Space; EIRP=Effective Isotopic Radiated Power; ERP=Effective Radiated Power; ESS=Extended Service Set; ETSI=European Telecommunications Standards Institute; FCC=Federal Communications Commission; FCS=Frame Check Sequence; FDDI=Fiber Distributed Data Interference; FH=Frequency Hopping; FHSS=Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum; GFSK=Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying; GPS=Global Positioning System; HR=High Rate; HR/DSSS=High Rate Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum; IBSS=Independent Basic Service Set; ICV=Integrity Check Value; ID=IDentifier; IV=Initialization Vector; IEEE=Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; IAPP=Inter-Access Point Protocol; IP=Internet Protocol; IR=InfraRed; ISI=Inter Symbol Interference; ISM=Industrial, Scientific and Medical; ITU=International Telecommunications Union; LAN=Local Area Network; LBT=Listen Before Talk; LLC=Logical Link Control; MAC=Medium Access Control layer; MIB=Management Information Base; MMAC-PC=Mobile Multimedia Access Communication Promition Council; MSDU=MAC Service Data Unit; NACK=Negative ACKnowledge; NAV=Network Allocation Vector; NIC=Network Interface Card; OFDM=Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing; OSI=Open Systems Interconnection; PBCC=Packet Binary Convolution Coding; PC=Point Coordinator; PCMCIA=Personal Computer Memory Card International Association; PCF=Point Coordination Function; PER=Packet Error Rate; PHY=PHYsical layer; PICS=Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement; PIFS=Priority InterFrame Space; PLCP=Physycal Layer Convergence Procedure; PMD=Physical Medium Dependant; PPDU=PLCP Protocol Data Unit; PPM=Pulse Position Modulation; PS=Power Save; PSDU=PLCP Serive Data Unit; QPSK=Quadrature Phase Shift Keying; RA=Receiver Address; RC4=RSA Cipher algorithm 4; RF=Radio Frequency; RFID=Radio Frequency ID; RMS=Root Mean Square; RSA=Rivest-Shamir-Adleman; RSADSI=RSA Data Security Inc.; RTS=Request To Send; SA=Source Address; SFD=Start of Frame Delimmiter; SIFS=Short InterFrame Space; SNMP=Simple Network Management Protocol; SSID=Service Set IDentity; SYNC=SYNChronisation; TA=Transmitter Address; TIM=Traffic Indication Map; WEP=Wired Equivalent Privacy; WLAN=Wireless Local Area Network.