IEEE 802.11ba

2Overview of IEEE 802.11

2.1 Introduction

IEEE 802.11 is a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard. Here we provide a short overview of IEEE 802.11 as background for more detailed chapters on the IEEE 802.11ba wake‐up radio standard. IEEE 802.11ba is an amendment to IEEE 802.11 adding new capabilities. There have been many amendments to the IEEE 802.11 standard over the years. The original IEEE 802.11 standard was published in 1997. Then in 1999 amendments 802.11a and 802.11b were published. Those amendments added higher data rate physical (PHY) modes. As one can see, these amendments are typically indicated by “802.11” with one or more letters appended. Some of the more famous amendments add major new PHY capabilities: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11n, 802.11ac, and most recently 802.11ax. There are many other amendments, some of which specify operation in millimeter wave frequency bands, like 802.11ad and 802.11ay. There are many other less well‐known amendments that add additional capabilities, often in the medium access control (MAC) layer.

Here we will provide some background on PHY and MAC layers of IEEE 802.11. This background material is focused on the key aspects of the PHY and MAC layer that are important to understand 802.11ba and do not provide a detailed description of 802.11. For a more detailed description, the reader is directed to [1] which provides a detailed description of IEEE 802.11 with a focus on 802.11n and 802.11ac.

Section 2.2 gives an overview of the ...