Overview

Wireless LANs have been talked about for a while and today there are products in the market which provide users with wireless connectivity to an enterprise or corporate network. They seamlessly provide the business user a connection to the Internet and the ability to access data anywhere and anytime. The IEEE 802.11 and HiperLAN2 standards are focussing on telecommuters, SOHOs, and hospitals to make the biggest impact.

The two popular wireless LAN technologies are the IEEE 802.11 and HiperLAN2. A variation of IEEE 802.11 supports data rates of 11 Mbps and a range of 100 meters, but it is most popular in the US. The HiperLAN2 is the fastest growing wireless LAN technology with a proposed data rate of 54 Mbps and a range over 150 meters.

Wireless LANs combine data connectivity with user mobility and provide a good general purpose connectivity alternative for a broad range of business customers. Also, with strong popularity in vertical markets such as health-care, retail, manufacturing, warehousing, and academia, productivity gains are realized by using handheld terminals and notebook PCs to transmit real-time information to centralized hosts for processing.

Market Research

Business Research Group predicts the worldwide wireless LAN market revenues to grow to more than $2 billion revenues by the year 2000.

Xilinx Solutions

The Spartan™-II FPGA architecture has enabled a whole new generation of low-cost high volume solutions. This, combined with a vast portfolio of soft IP (Intellectual Property) cores allows Spartan-II FPGAs to provide solutions at a significantly lower cost than ASSPs and custom ASICs, while offering all of the time-to-market and flexibility benefits associated with programmable devices. The presentation provides specific details on how Xilinx solutions enable wireless LAN-based home networking.

Types

IEEE 802.11
HiperLAN2