Five trends shaping 802.11 WLANs

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on WiFi technology have become a standard part of life for many, whether integrated within a home television or a radio-controlled drone helicopter. Th e latest commercially available version of WiFi, based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11ac standard, provides signifi cant connectivity improvements. In addition, it is driving upgrades in consumer and enterprise markets from earlier versions, such as IEEE 802.11n. As the use of WLANs has grown, so have feature requests, helping to drive the evolution of WiFi more rapidly than ever. Th e WiFi brand name popularized by the WiFi Alliance refers to products based on the IEEE 802.11 family of WLAN standards. Th e IEEE 802.11 standard was fi rst approved in 1997. Subsequent amendments added innovations such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM; from IEEE 802.11a) and multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems (from IEEE 802.11n) to keep up with market requirements.