How Does WiFi Work?(Tech Explained):-WiFi Standards Explained

We use WiFi daily in our homes, hotels, airports, library. We use WIFI to connect to our smartphones, computers and many other IoT devices. It is a medium that we use daily to connect to the internet. So in this article let's understand how does WiFi Work

What is WIFI? How does it work?

A wireless network uses radio waves, just like cell phones, televisions and radios do. In fact, communication across a wireless network is a lot like two-way radio communication. 

Here's what happens:

1. A computer's wireless adapter translates data into a radio signal and transmits it using an antenna.
2. A wireless router or modem receives the signal and decodes it. The router sends the information to the Internet using a physical, wired Ethernet connection that is delivered to us by various service operators like BSNL, Airtel, Jio, Vodafone etc through their broadband or fiber optic services.

The process also works in reverse, with the router receiving information from the Internet, translating it into a radio signal and sending it to the computer's wireless adapter. For using a Wireless Network you need a WiFi compatible Router or Modem that can change a wired internet connection into a  wireless WIFI connection.

The radios used for WiFi communication are very similar to the radios used for walkie-talkies, cell phones, and other devices. They can transmit and receive radio waves, and they can convert 1s and 0s into radio waves and convert the radio waves back into 1s and 0s. But WiFi radios have a few notable differences from other radios:

They transmit at frequencies of 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. This frequency is considerably higher than the frequencies used for cell phones, walkie-talkies, and televisions. The higher frequency allows the signal to carry more data.

They use 802.11 networking standards, which come in several flavors

WIFI(802.11)networking standards

• 802.11a transmits at 5 GHz and can move up to 54 megabits of data per second. It also uses orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a more efficient coding technique that splits that radio signal into several sub-signals before they reach a receiver. This greatly reduces interference.
• 802.11b is the slowest and least expensive standard. For a while, its cost made it popular, but now it's becoming less common as faster standards become less expensive. 802.11b transmits in the 2.4 GHz frequency band of the radio spectrum. It can handle up to 11 megabits of data per second, and it uses complementary code keying (CCK) modulation to improve speeds.
• 802.11g transmits at 2.4 GHz like 802.11b, but it's a lot faster -- it can handle up to 54 megabits of data per second. 802.11g is faster because it uses the same OFDM coding as 802.11a.
• 802.11n is the most widely available of the standards and is backward compatible with a, b and g. It significantly improved speed and range over its predecessors. For instance, although 802.11g theoretically moves 54 megabits of data per second, it only achieves real-world speeds of about 24 megabits of data per second because of network congestion. 802.11n, however, reportedly can achieve speeds as high as 140 megabits per second. 802.11n can transmit up to four streams of data, each at a maximum of 150 megabits per second, but most routers only allow for two or three streams.
• 802.11ac:- It has yet to be widely adopted and is still in draft form at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), but devices that support it are already on the market. 802.11ac is backward compatible with 802.11n (and therefore the others, too), with n on the 2.4 GHz band and ac on the 5 GHz band. It is less prone to interference and far faster than its predecessors, pushing a maximum of 450 megabits per second on a single stream, although real-world speeds may be lower. Like 802.11n, it allows for transmission on multiple spatial streams -- up to eight, optionally. It is sometimes called 5G WiFibecause of its frequency band, sometimes Gigabit WiFi because of its potential to exceed a gigabit per second on multiple streams and sometimes Very High Throughput (VHT) for the same reason.
• 802.11ax:-IEEE 802.11ax, also known as High-Efficiency Wireless (HEW), is a Wireless Local Area Network standard in the IEEE 802.11 set of specifications. The wireless network technology is also labeled as Wi-Fi 6 by Wi-Fi Alliance. IEEE 802.11ax is designed to operate in the already existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums and it will incorporate additional bands between 1 and 7 GHz as they become available. In addition to utilizing MIMO and MU-MIMO, the new amendment introduces OFDMA to improve overall spectral efficiency. Though the nominal data rate is just 37% higher than IEEE 802.11ac, the new amendment is expected to achieve a 4× increase to average user throughput due to more efficient spectrum utilization and improvements for dense deployments. Devices showed a top speed of up to 11Gbits/s.IEEE 802.11ax is due to be publicly released sometime in 2019.

What is Wifi Hotspot?

A WiFi hotspot is simply an area with an accessible wireless network. The term is most often used to refer to wireless networks in public areas like airports and coffee shops. Some are free and some require fees for use, but in either case, they can be handy when you are on the go. You can even create your own mobile hotspot using a cell phone or an external device that can connect to a cellular network. And you can always set up a WiFi network at home. There are also various portable WIFI hotspot devices like JioFi that are basically Mobile Hotspots that connect to cellular data using a sim card and can transmit data or internet wirelessly . Many smartphones and computer can be connected to a Hotspot.

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