WIRELESS LAN TECHNOLOGIES

WIRELESS LAN TECHNOLOGIES

• Wireless LAN’s are generally categorized to the
transmission technique that is used. All current wireless
LAN products fall into one of the following categories
• 1. Infrared LAN(IR): An individual cell of an IR LAN is
limited to a single room because IR light does not
penetrate opaque walls
• Spread Spectrum LAN:It make use of spread spectrum
transmission technology
• Narrowband microwave: these LAN’s operate at
microwave frequencies but do not use spread spectrum.
 INFRARED LAN
• Infrared light is used for data transmission
• There are three alternative transmission
technique for IR data transmission
1. the transmitted signal can be focussed and
aimed as in a TV remote control
2. It can be radiated omnidirectionally
3. it can be reflected from a light colored
ceiling
 DIRECTED BEAM IR
• It can be used to create point to point link
• A focused IR data link can have a range of kilometers that
is not required for constructing indoor wireless LAN but it
can be used for cross building interconnect between
bridges or routers located in buildings within a line of
sight of each other
• One indoor use of point to point IR link is to setup a
token ring LAN. A set of IR Transceivers can be positioned
so that data circulate around them in a ring. Each
transceiver support a workstation or a hub of stations
Point to Point IR LAN
 OMNIDIRECTIONAL
• It involves a single base station within the line
of sight of all other stations on the LAN.
Typically the station is mounted on the ceiling
• The base station acts as a multiport repeater
• The ceiling transmitter broadcasts an
omnidirectional signal that can be received by
all other IR transceivers in the area . These
other transceivers transmit a directional beam
aimed at the ceiling base unit
 Diffused configuration
• All IR transceivers are focused and aimed at a
point on a diffusely reflecting ceiling. The IR
radiation striking the ceiling are reflected and
reradiated omnidirectionally and picked up by
all of the receivers in the area
 IR LAN : ADV. & DIS ADV.
• The IR spectrum is virtually unlimited so it is possible to
achieve extremely high data rates
• No licensing is required
• Reflection can be used to achieve coverage of an entire room
• IR Light does not penetrate opaque walls this has two
advantages.first IR communication can be made more
secured against eavesdroppoing than microwave
• A separate IR installation can be operated in every room
without interferance
• IR transmission equipments are relatively inexpensive
 IR trasmission disadvantages
• Indoor environment experience intence IR
radiation from sun and indoor lighting. This
appear as noise in infrared receiver requring
the use of higher power in radiation
• High power IR is limited by eye safety and
power consumption
 SPREAD SPECTRUM LAN
• It is the most popular type of wireless LAN which uses
spread spectrum technique
• A spread spectrum wire less LAN make use of a multiple cell
arrangement and each cell make use of different centre
frequencies within the same band to avoid interference.
• Within a given cell the technology can either be a hub or
peer to peer
• In hub topology hub is mounted on the ceiling and
connected to a backbone wired LAN to get access stations
attached to wired LAN and wireless stations that are part of
wireless LAN in other cells
 SPREAD SPECTRUM LAN
• in hub topology hub acts as a multiport repeater and all
stations in the cell transmit only to the hub and receive only
from the hub
• Alternatively each station may broad cast using an
omnidirectional antenna so that all other stations in the cell
may receive. This corresponds to logical bus configuration
• A peer to peer topology is one in which there is no hub. An
algorithm such as CSMA is used to control access. This
topology is appropriate for adhoc LAN
• It was initially developed by the military to avoid jamming
and eavesdropping of the signals.
 Narrow Band Microwave LAN
• It uses a microwave radio frequency band for signal
transmission with a relatively narrow band width,
just wide enough to accommodate the signal
• It requires licensing
• It is mainly used to interconnect LAN between
buildings
• This requires microwave dishes on both ends of the
link. The dishes must be in line-of-sight to transmit
and collect the microwave signals.