IEEE 802.11g Explained

The adoption of Intersil's OFDM-based proposal for the IEEE 802.11g Draft Standard is a significant milestone in the continuing development of standards-based WLAN technology. Adoption of the proposal by IEEE 802.11 Task Group G accomplishes two major objectives:

1. OFDM will be deployed at 2.4 GHz as a mandatory part of the 802.11g Standard, and it will support data rates up to 54 Mbps
2. Backward compatibility with existing Wi-Fi (802.11b) systems is guaranteed.

The Intersil proposal requires use of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) for higher data rates (>20 Mbps) and requires support for Complimentary Code Keying (CCK) to ensure backward compatibility with existing 802.11b radios as mandatory elements of the 802.11g Draft Standard.