Exciting Projects for PHY and MAC Layers of IEEE 802.11 [Standards]

The first few widely accepted amendments to IEEE 802.11 wireless networking specifications, namely IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, and IEEE 802.11g, featured relatively low spectral efficiencies and data rates. Driven by technological advances in signal processing and communications theory, sustained improvement in spectral efficiency, coverage, and quality of service has been achieved in IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.11ac. Particularly, progressive system improvement is achieved by the successive introduction of novel techniques, including orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna techniques. Some advanced transmission techniques, especially multiuser (MU)-MIMO and transmit beamforming, have also helped to boost the performance of Wi-Fi to gigabit-persecond speed, and they have led to the current state of the art, namely IEEE 802.11ac in 2.4- and 5-GHz bands, and IEEE 802.11ad in the 60-GHz frequency band.