Seven years later, 802.11n approaches finalization

Wireless-N draft users, get ready for a router firmware update because rumor has it that the IEEE has sent its latest 802.11n draft standard off to the Standards Board Review Committee (RevCom), which reviews draft proposals for their final vote on standardization. If this were a roller coaster, this would be the slow hill climb before the final drop. RevCom's quarterly meeting will be from September 9 - 11, and if approved, the final vote could take place in November.

The first draft of the multi-antenna wireless standard took nearly two years to complete, and it was promptly shot down in the first vote. While it is typical for the earliest versions of a standard to not make it far in the standardization process, IEEE hadn't anticipated the flood of almost 12,000 comments on the first ballot, meaning the process of revision had the potential to be long and arduous.

Two years later, in March of this year, the draft had been revised and voted upon eight more times. Since that time it has been on a much faster track, seeing revisions every month until Last week, when the final draft received unanimous approval to send to RevCom.

Matthew Gast, member of the IEEE 802.11 working group, and chair of 802.11 Task Group M said that his group is currently working on the "next step," with two task groups, TGac and TGad, which are researching methods to create physical layers capable of gigabit speeds.