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Your post is full of errors. CMOS radio didn't exist in 1995. 802.11a didn't come out 'after' 802.11b. 802.11a and 802.11b were ratified on the SAME DAY. 80

by gonzo 14y ago

Your post is full of errors. CMOS radio didn't exist in 1995. 802.11a didn't come out 'after' 802.11b. 802.11a and 802.11b were ratified on the SAME DAY. 802.11g is a bit more than "802.11a in 2.4GHz".

femto 14y ago
I'm looking at this from the point of view of the technology, rather than the standards, as that's where I was involved. From a technology point of view, 802.11b (particularly its 1 and 2Mbps modes) was developed before 802.11a, and so is "older". I know this, because I had the design for the world's first 802.11a modem on my computer's screen, and one of the professors had earlier bought an instance of a DSSS WLAN (essentially 802.11b) to see how it performed. Granted the early "802.11b" radios might not have been CMOS. Their frequency was limited by what was technically possible in a consumer product though. I can't remember exactly what was in that "802.11b" WLAN. The 802.11a band was definitely set by what was possible in CMOS. The CMOS radio itself might not have existed in 1995, but planning was in progress and we had a pretty good idea of what was possible.
- gonzo 14y ago
  802.11b was CCK modulation (and to a lessor extent PBCC, but that didn't take-off). DSSS wasn't 802.11b, it was 802.11 (or half of it, the other PHY at that point was FHSS). 802.11b's 1Mbps and 2Mbps modes were DSSS, and pre-existed 802.11b. These (and the FHSS PHY) were all part of the 1997 standard. 802.11b and 802.11a came along in September of 1999. Who is 'we'? Because you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
  - femto 14y ago
    "we" = the authors of this paper: http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/97_mmlan.pdf http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/97_mmlan.pdf Percival is an inventor on one of the fundamental WLAN patents (recently in the news): http://www.google.com/patents/US5487069 http://www.google.com/patents/US5487069 Skellern and Weste were the founders of Radiata Communications, which was first to market with 802.11a, before being bought by Cisco. http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/75649/cisco_acquires_taste_radiata/ http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/75649/cisco_acquires... I'm one of the other authors. Maybe I'm wrong, in that the written history tells it differently, but I'm recalling what was said around the meeting table and across the office partition. I might be a bit loose with the terminology, but to me it's not packaged up neatly into standards, as it was a non-linear development process when I was dealing with it. --- Edit: fix URL + name
  - coob 14y ago
    Is there any need to be so uncivilly acerbic?
andrewcooke 14y ago
after a little googling i can find references to papers pblished in 1994 and 1995 that refer to GHz CMOS components (eg A. Rofougaran et al., A 1 GHz CMOS RF Front-end IC with Wide Dynamic Range, ESSCIR, 1995, pp. 250-253; J. Carols and M. S. J. Steyaert, A 1.5 GHz Highly Linear CMOS Down Conversion Mixer, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 30, 1995, pp. 736-742.) i know nothing about this, so perhaps they are irrelevant, but on face value it seems like a 2.5GHz system could have existed in labs at that date, or at least was clearly going to be possible.
- gonzo 14y ago
  many people were chasing the dream of CMOS radio in the mid-90s. You could even make it work in the lab, but holding a design in production wasn't possible then.

by gonzo 14y ago

femto 14y ago

I'm looking at this from the point of view of the technology, rather than the standards, as that's where I was involved. From a technology point of view, 802.11b (particularly its 1 and 2Mbps modes) was developed before 802.11a, and so is "older". I know this, because I had the design for the world's first 802.11a modem on my computer's screen, and one of the professors had earlier bought an instance of a DSSS WLAN (essentially 802.11b) to see how it performed. Granted the early "802.11b" radios might not have been CMOS. Their frequency was limited by what was technically possible in a consumer product though. I can't remember exactly what was in that "802.11b" WLAN. The 802.11a band was definitely set by what was possible in CMOS. The CMOS radio itself might not have existed in 1995, but planning was in progress and we had a pretty good idea of what was possible.

gonzo 14y ago
802.11b was CCK modulation (and to a lessor extent PBCC, but that didn't take-off). DSSS wasn't 802.11b, it was 802.11 (or half of it, the other PHY at that point was FHSS). 802.11b's 1Mbps and 2Mbps modes were DSSS, and pre-existed 802.11b. These (and the FHSS PHY) were all part of the 1997 standard. 802.11b and 802.11a came along in September of 1999. Who is 'we'? Because you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
- femto 14y ago
  "we" = the authors of this paper: http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/97_mmlan.pdf http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/97_mmlan.pdf Percival is an inventor on one of the fundamental WLAN patents (recently in the news): http://www.google.com/patents/US5487069 http://www.google.com/patents/US5487069 Skellern and Weste were the founders of Radiata Communications, which was first to market with 802.11a, before being bought by Cisco. http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/75649/cisco_acquires_taste_radiata/ http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/75649/cisco_acquires... I'm one of the other authors. Maybe I'm wrong, in that the written history tells it differently, but I'm recalling what was said around the meeting table and across the office partition. I might be a bit loose with the terminology, but to me it's not packaged up neatly into standards, as it was a non-linear development process when I was dealing with it. --- Edit: fix URL + name
- coob 14y ago
  Is there any need to be so uncivilly acerbic?

andrewcooke 14y ago

after a little googling i can find references to papers pblished in 1994 and 1995 that refer to GHz CMOS components (eg A. Rofougaran et al., A 1 GHz CMOS RF Front-end IC with Wide Dynamic Range, ESSCIR, 1995, pp. 250-253; J. Carols and M. S. J. Steyaert, A 1.5 GHz Highly Linear CMOS Down Conversion Mixer, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 30, 1995, pp. 736-742.) i know nothing about this, so perhaps they are irrelevant, but on face value it seems like a 2.5GHz system could have existed in labs at that date, or at least was clearly going to be possible.

gonzo 14y ago
many people were chasing the dream of CMOS radio in the mid-90s. You could even make it work in the lab, but holding a design in production wasn't possible then.