TRENDS IN WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES

TRENDS IN WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES
During the past two decades, as the vision of the WLAN industry evolved, WLANs
were implemented based on a variety of innovative technologies, and at times industry
expectations were high for development of a sizable market. Today, the major differentiator
of WLANs from wide-area cellular services is the method of delivery of data
to users, data-rate limitations, and frequency band regulation. Cellular data services
are delivered by operating companies, whereas WLANs are owned by enterprises that
utilize them in conducting their own businesses. At a time when 3G cellular industries
are striving to provide 2-Mb/s packet data services, the WLAN industry is implementing
standards that provide data rates up to 54 Mb/s, and new WLAN standards under
44 EVOLUTION OF THE WIRELESS INDUSTRY
development will begin to compete with wired LAN data rates. Another differentiation
with other radio networks is that today almost all WLANs operate in the unlicensed
bands, where frequency regulations are lenient and there is no fee or waiting time to
obtain access to a band. Next, we summarize briefly some of the important ongoing
trends in wireless networking technologies.