A Brief Tutorial on the PHY and MAC layers of the IEEE 802.11b Standard

The IEEE 802.11b standard is broken into two main layers: the MAC or Media Access Control layer and the PHY or Physical Layer. These two layers allow a functional separation of the standard and, more importantly allows a single data protocol to be used with several different RF transmission techniques. Since the goal of this thesis is to predict the performance of IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN products, this chapter will present an overview of the DSSS function of the PHY layer and a basic description of the MAC layer.