wiki:802.11/FAQ

Version 8 (modified by murphpo, 11 years ago) (diff)

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802.11 Reference Design: FAQ

What parts of the 802.11 standard are implemented?

Our implementation focuses on the OFDM PHY and DCF MAC. We tried to choose a subset of these specifications which are feasible to implement and provide the most utility to wireless networking researchers. We plan to continue developing the design. Feedback is welcome on which features in the standard would be most useful in future releases.

The IEEE 802.11 standard is huge (2700 page PDF). Implementing the entire standard on WARP is infeasible, and frankly not all that useful as a research tool.

The specifics of the current implementation are discussed in the PHY and MAC pages of this user guide.


What encryption schemes are supported?

None.

This could be an interesting future extension, but falls far outside our areas of expertise.


Is the WARP 802.11 Reference Design Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™?

No.

Wi-Fi® is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry association which seeks to ensure compliance and inter-operability of wireless networking equipement. Our design is intended to be a starting point for researchers, not a wireless device for end-users. The whole point of this design is to enable experiments with extensions to the standard. Pursuit of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ status doesn't facilitate this.


How is the WARP 802.11 Reference Design licensed?

The source code and models for the 802.11 Reference Design are distributed under the terms of the Mango Reference Design License. For any questions about the license terms please contact Mango Communications.

It is our intention that users should be free to do the following with the 802.11 Reference Design

  • Use the Reference Design on Mango hardware for teaching and academic research
  • Modify the Reference MAC and PHY source code
  • Publish results from experiments using the Reference Design
  • Share customized versions of our MAC and PHY with other users of the Reference Design

Please note that the license requires this design only be used on hardware manufactured by Mango Communications. We recognize this requirement diverges from true open source. It is the only approach we can conceive that justifies the significant investment of resources to develop and support a complex design distributed at no cost. We want to provide hardware and reference designs that enable great research. We can't do this as free IP suppliers for competing platforms.


What hardware is supported?

The WARP 802.11 Reference Design is supported on Mango WARP v3 hardware.

Previous generations of WARP hardware are not supported, as the design requires tools and FPGA features which preclude porting to Virtex-II Pro or Virtex-4 FPGAs.

The Research License requires the design only be used on hardware supplied by Mango Communications. If you're interested in using the 802.11 Reference Design on different hardware, please contact Mango to discuss alternate license terms.