December 2001
Intermediate to advanced
336 pages
8h 42m
English
The IEEE 802.11 MAC fundamentally exists to facilitate exchange of data frames for different applications between two WLAN stations, employing the support of the PHY layer. A typical instance might be two stations exchanging a file using the FTP program. The FTP program is then the application, and the file to be exchanged is broken down into small data chunks called MAC service data units (MSDUs). The MAC layer accepts MSDUs and adds headers and trailers to create MAC protocol data units (MPDUs) and passes them over to the PHY layer for transmission. In the world of MAC frames, it is convenient to think of these MPDUs as so-called data frames.
The exchange of data frames with suitable headers and trailers enables the passage ...