WaveLAN®-II: a high-performance wireless LAN for the unlicensed band

In July 1997 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) completed standard 802.11 for wireless local area networks (LANs). WaveLAN®-II, to be released early in 1998, offers compatibility with the IEEE 802.11 standard for operation in the 2.4-GHz band. It is the successor to WaveLAN-I, which has been in the market since 1991. As a next-generation wireless LAN product, WaveLAN-II has many enhancements to improve performance in various areas. An IEEE 802.11 direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) product, WaveLAN-II supports the basic bit rates of 1 and 2 Mb/s, but it can also provide enhanced bit rates as high as 10 Mb/s. This paper discusses various aspects of the system design of WaveLAN-II and characteristics of its antenna, radio-frequency (RF) front-end, digital signal processor (DSP) transceiver chip, and medium access controller (MAC) chip.