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Beacon Frame
Beacon Frame
Beacon frame is one of the management frames in IEEE 802.11 based WLANs. It contains all
the information about the network. Beacon frames are transmitted periodically to announce the
presence of a Wireless LAN network. Beacon frames are transmitted by the Access Point (AP) in
an infrastructure BSS. In IBSS network beacon generation is distributed among the stations.
Timestamp
After receiving the beacon frame all the stations change their local clocks to this time.
This helps with synchronization.
Beacon interval
This is the time interval between beacon transmissions. The time at which a node (AP or
station when in Ad-hoc) must send a beacon is known as Target Beacon Transmission
Time (TBTT). Beacon interval expressed in Time Unit (TU). It is a configurable
parameter in the AP and typically configured as 100 TU [1].
Capability information
Capability information field spans to 16 bits and contain information about capability of
the device/network. Type of network such as AdHoc or Infrastructure network is signaled
in this field. Apart from this information, it announce the support for polling, encryption
details also.
SSID
Supported rates
Frequency-hopping (FH) Parameter Set
Direct-Sequence (DS) Parameter Set
Contention-Free (CF) Parameter Set
IBSS Parameter Set
Traffic Indication Map (TIM)
[edit] References
1. ^ "802.11 Beacons Revealed - Article". http://www.wi-
fiplanet.com/tutorials/print.php/1492071.