Wi-Fi generations

The primary communication through Wi-Fi networks is between access points (APs) and clients (STAs) over unlicensed spectrum. At the core of Wi-Fi is a media access control (MAC) protocol called carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). This protocol allows APs and clients to listen, sense, backoff, and transmit one at a time like one would in a face to face conversation by performing clear channel assessments (CCA).

CSMA/CA enables back and forth communication using radio frequency signals to modulate and demodulate bits across the air. The reliability, efficiency, and performance of Wi-Fi based network communication is coupled to the efficacy of APs and clients contending and competing for access to the RF medium, one after another.

IEEE 802.11 and Wi-Fi generations

The Wi-Fi Alliance introduced a generation numbering scheme to simplify technology differentiation and improve user awareness of features across amendments to the IEEE 802.11 standard. This naming convention reduces the need to memorize the meanings of numerous amendments, instead using Wi-Fi followed by a generation identifier.

While the Wi-Fi generations correspond to amendments to the IEEE 802.11 standard, these two terms serve different purposes. The generation identifiers denote specific Wi-Fi Alliance certification programs, which include subsets of features defined in the corresponding IEEE 802.11 specification.

These pages aim to provide insights and impact to proper design, deployment, and optimization for the latest generations of Wi-Fi.