IEEE 802.11n

 

802.11n builds on previous 802.11 standards by adding multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). MIMO uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennas to improve the system performance. The transmitter and receiver use precoding and postcoding techniques, respectively, to achieve the capacity of a MIMO link. Precoding includes spatial beamforming and spatial coding, where spatial beamforming improves the received signal quality at the decoding stage. Spatial coding can increase data throughput via spatial multiplexing and increase range by exploiting the spatial diversity, through techniques such as Alamouti coding. The number of antennas relates to the number of simultaneous streams: two receivers and two transmitters (2x2) or four receivers and four transmitters (4x4). The standards requirement is a 2x2 with a maximum two streams, but allows 4x4.

The Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC)^[2] was formed to help accelerate the IEEE 802.11n development process and promote a technology specification for interoperability of next-generation wireless local area networking (WLAN) products^[3].

An 802.11 access point may operate in one of three modes:

1. Legacy (only 802.11a, and b/g)
2. Mixed (802.11a, b/g, and n)
3. Greenfield (only 802.11n) - maximum performance