The IEEE 802.11 universe

The introduction of IEEE's 802.11 standards has enabled a mass market, with a huge impact in the home, office, and public areas. Today, laptops, PCs, printers, cellular phones, VoIP phones, MP3 players, Blu-Ray players, and many more devices incorporate wireless LAN technology. With low-cost chipsets and support for high data rates, 802.11 has become a universal solution for an ever increasing application space. As a direct consequence of its high market penetration, several amendments to the basic 802.11 standard have been developed or are under development. They fix technology issues or add functionality expected to be required by future applications. In this article we overview the emerging 802.11 standard and address the technical context of its extensions. The article highlights its finalized amendments and those under development.