scope:

The scope of this standard is to develop a medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specification for wireless connectivity for fixed, portable, and moving stations within a local area.

Purpose

The purpose of this standard is to provide wireless connectivity to automatic machinery, equipment, or stations that require rapid deployment, which may be portable or hand-held, or which may be mounted on moving vehicles within a local area. This standard also offers regulatory bodies a means of standardizing access to one or more frequency bands for the purpose of local area communication.

Specifically, this standard

- Describes the functions and services required by an IEEE 802.11 compliant device to operate within ad hoc and infrastructure networks as well as the aspects of station mobility (transition) within those networks.

- Defines the MAC procedures to support the asynchronous MAC service data unit (MSDU) delivery services.

- Defines several PHY signaling techniques and interface functions that are controlled by the IEEE 802.11 MAC.

- Permits the operation of an IEEE 802.11 conformant device within a wireless local area network (LAN) that may coexist with multiple overlapping IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs.

- Describes the requirements and procedures to provide privacy of user information being transferred over the wireless medium (WM) and authentication of IEEE 802.11 conformant devices.