IEEE approves 802.11g standard

IDG News Service - A long-awaited standard for wireless LANs that offers more carrying capacity than the current IEEE 802.11b specification while using the same frequencies won final approval this morning.
The new 802.11g standard lays out the ground rules for WLAN gear that's capable of at least 24Mbit/sec. and up to 54Mbit/sec., while remaining backward compatible with existing 802.11b gear that runs at a maximum of 11Mbit/sec. Both use radio spectrum in the 2.4 GHz band. Another standard, 802.11a, defines 54Mbit/sec. gear in the 5-GHz band.
Many vendors have already been shipping equipment based on drafts of the standard for months and have said they will make those products meet the final specification through free firmware downloads. The draft products already are driving the growth of the WLAN business, which has been one of the few bright spots in a gloomy IT industry in recent years, according to market research company Dell'Oro Group Inc. in Redwood, Calif.
The Standards Board of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. approved the new specification at a meeting in Piscataway, N.J., after a standardization process that took just over three years.
Working out the details took about as long for 802.11g as for the other two 802.11 versions, but considering how the 802.11 Working Group has grown since 802.11b was approved in 1999, that's relatively quick work, said Matthew Shoemake, chairman of the 802.11g task group and director of advanced technologies at Texas Instruments Inc.'s WLAN business unit. He spoke late yesterday on the eve of the expected approval.
"The number of voting members we have now is somewhere near six [to] eight times the number of voting members we had when we were working on 'a' and 'b,'" Shoemake said. The group now has 397 members.
Key events in the development process included a compromise between proposals by two component makers, TI and Intersil Corp., and a rule change by the Federal Communications Commission to allow the use of a technology called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in the 2.4-GHz band.
The task group settled on a so-called pure OFDM technology and voted to include the competing OFDM proposals, which proponents said can offer better performance and efficiency under certain circumstances, as optional capabilities, Shoemake said.
Although products have to provide only a maximum 24Mbit/sec. carrying capacity to meet 802.11g's speed requirements, the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group will require support for 54Mbit/sec. performance for its own 2.4-GHz high-speed label. Shoemake said he isn't aware of any current gear or planned standard products that aren't built for 54Mbit/sec. performance.
The 802.11 Working Group will mark the landmark vote the same way it has the other major standards approvals, Shoemake said. The celebration is set for the group's next meeting, in San Francisco next month. "802.11 has a ritual whenever we approve a new amendment to our standard. ... We actually pop champagne and take a group photo," he said.