Gigabit Wireless Networking with IEEE 802.11ac: Technical Overview and Challenges

Abstract

The ever-growing proliferation of wireless devices and concurrent deployments of bandwidth intensive applications has been having a significant impact on user experience in high-density wireless areas. IEEE 802.11ac is a recently ratified Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standard that promises to improve wireless user experience by delivering gigabit speed to end-user applications. 802.11ac utilizes new technologies such as Channel Bonding, Beamforming, and Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) to improve wireless performance. This article reviews recent technological advances made in the field of WLANs and then focuses on the recent IEEE 802.11ac standard. We present actual data rates attained by currently available 802.11ac hardware, and we also discuss foreseen technical challenges that still need to be addressed to enable efficient and seamless gigabit wireless networking