Thursday, July 11, 2013

IEEE Targets Super-Efficiency, Super-Dense WLANs

A new IEEE 802.11 study group has been set up to define the scope of a new standard for high-efficiency, high-performance wireless local area networks(WLANs).


The new IEEE 802.11 High Efficiency WLAN (HEW) Study Group will consider use cases, including dense network environments with large numbers of access points and stations.

IEEE said it has received interest from more than 300 individuals from equipment and silicon suppliers, service providers, carriers, systems integrators, consultant organizations and academic institutions.

In addition, an IEEE 802.11 Pre Association Discovery (PAD) task group has also been formed to explore the scope of a future 802.11 amendment intended to improve user experience by providing information about network devices and services beyond the access point prior to full connection establishment of a device to a wireless local area network (WLAN).
“The WLAN environment is evolving; no longer are stations merely looking for access to Internet service. This creates opportunities to deliver new services, as the IEEE 802.11 standard needs to be enhanced to better advertise and describe these new services,” said Stephen McCann, chair of the new IEEE P802.11aq task group. “The proposed amendment will provide mechanisms that assist in the pre-association discovery of services, by addressing the means to advertise their existence and enable delivery of information that describes them.”
http://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/hew_update.htm
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/wg/WG802.11.html
http://standards.ieee.org