Ever imagined, you walk into a cafe to have some coffee, take out your mobile phone, point to a screen and order 2 large cups. You are in the middle of the Sahara desert and watching Lawrence of Arabia on your mobile device or you use a wrist watch to call up your dear one's and talk with them. Well, this is the future and this future is near. Welcome to the wireless generation.

We all know, how the internet has changed our lives, from doctors to students from engineers to technocrats, the Internet has been a cornerstone in their success. Wireless technology is the next internet in the making.

There are many different wireless technologies in the market today, technologies like Bluetooth, 802.11.What are all these technologies and what do they mean to the simple user.
We can best talk about these technologies when we consider their distance up to which communications can occur.

SHORT RANGE:
These technologies work in the range of meters.

• Bluetooth is an active member of this group. Bluetooth is a short range wireless technology which operates in the 2.4 GHZ ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) Band. It has a data communication range of 10 meters and a Transmission speed of 720kbp/s.
  
  Bluetooth can offer wireless access to LAN's, mobile phone network and the Internet for a host of home appliances and portable handheld interfaces. Bluetooth was invented by Mr.L.M.Ericssion of Sweden. Companies are developing radical applications in Bluetooth devices and it's quite sure this one is there to stay.
  
  
• Infrared Communication: It is a widely accepted and inexpensive short range wireless technology that allows infrared device equipped systems to speak with each other. Digital Cameras, phones, pagers, data collectors, modems etc. use Infrared communication. Infrared provides connectivity at a distance of 1 meter at speeds of 4Mbps.
  
  
• Home RF: the HomeRF protocol provides high quality, multi-user voice capabilities. HomeRF combines the best of broadband wireless data networking technology with the most prevalent digital cordless telephony standard in the world. HomeRF provides low cost voice and data communications in the 2.4GHz ISM band.
  
  
• ZigBee: Short Range wireless technology which has a data transmission rate of 250 Kbps and 20 Kbps. It works on very low power and thus is used on very low Powered devices.

MEDIUM RANGE:
a. Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11):

IEEE (Institution of Electrical & Electronics engineers) 802.11 is a data transmission system which provides communication access between computing devices by using radio waves rather than a cable infrastructure. It is basically a local, high-speed wireless connectivity for fixed, portable and moving devices.

802.11 is a family of standards set forth by the IEEE to define the specifications for wireless LAN's. 802.11 supports speeds of 1, 2, 5.5, 11, 54 Mbps at distances of 150-2000 feet without a special antenna.

Future WLAN growth is expected in healthcare facilities, educational institutions, and corporate enterprise office spaces. In the corporation, conference rooms, public areas, and branch offices are likely venues for WLAN..

The original 802.11 specification provides data transmission rates of 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps. The technology was released by IEEE in 1997. The data rates supported by 802.11 were too slow to support general business requirements. In response to this, IEEE released 802.11b in 1999.

Now we can take a look at the different technologies in the family

• 802.11 b/ 802.11 High Rate: 802.11b provides a data transmission rate of 5.5 Mbps and 11Mbps. With the release of 802.11 b, WLAN can achieve wireless performance comparable to our existing wired computer networks.
  
  Many vendor companies have endorsed this wireless technology and are making appliances which will use this technology. Some companies which are into this technology are Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, Intersil, Lucent technologies.
  
  
• 802.11a: Fast Ethernet" standard of Wireless LAN's. It provides speeds of up to 54 Mbps and works in the 5 GHZ band.
  
  
• 802.11g: Another high-speed standard which is seen as a 'Step' towards 802.11a. It can achieve a speed of 54 Mbps and even more than that. It also works in the 2.4 GHZ range. This technology is compatible with 802.11b.
  
  
• 802.11e: Another upcoming standard which is designed to improve quality of the wireless LAN technology particularly in removing RF interference, managing bandwidth etc.

HiperLAN2: High Performance Radio Local Area Network Type 2 is a new high-performance networking technology. It is specifically suited for operating in LAN environments and operates at 5GHZ Radio frequency. HiperLAN2 is being developed by the European Telecommunications Standardization Institute (ETSI) Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN) project

So far we have seen technologies like Bluetooth, WLAN etc, technologies which are going to change our lives forever. The end result of such technologies would be easy accessibility to necessities, increased and improved personal and professional performance.