The IEEE is an acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. These are a bunch of scientists and students who together are a leading authority in the aerospace, telecommunications, biomedical engineering, electric power, etc. The IEEE consists of more than 365000 members from around the world.
The IEEE was formed in 1963 by the merging of:
AIEE – the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, that was responsible for wire Communications, light and power systems.
IRE, the Institute of Radio Engineers, responsible for wireless communications.
The IEEE is separated into different committees. The “802” committee develops Local Area Network standards and Metropolitan Area Network standards. The most well known standards include Ethernet, Token Ring, Wireless LAN, Bridging and Virtual Bridged LANs.
The IEEE specifications map the two lowest OSI layers which contain the “physical layer” and the “link layer”. The “Link layer” is subdivided in 2 sub-layers called “Logical Link control” (LLC) and “Media access control” (MAC).
The following table was taken from the Wikipedia – listing the different committees:
Working group Description
IEEE 802.1 Higher layer LAN protocols
IEEE 802.2 Logical link control
IEEE 802.3 Ethernet
IEEE 802.4 Token bus (disbanded)
IEEE 802.5 Token Ring
IEEE 802.6 Metropolitan Area Networks (disbanded)
IEEE 802.7 Broadband LAN using Coaxial Cable (disbanded)
IEEE 802.8 Fiber Optic TAG (disbanded)
IEEE 802.9 Integrated Services LAN (disbanded)
IEEE 802.10 Interoperable LAN Security (disbanded)
IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi certification)
IEEE 802.12 Demand priority IEEE 802.13 (not used)
IEEE 802.14 Cable modems (disbanded)
IEEE 802.15 Wireless PAN
IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth certification)
IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee certification)
IEEE 802.16 Broadband Wireless Access (WiMAX certification)
IEEE 802.16e (Mobile) Broadband Wireless Access
IEEE 802.17 Resilient packet ring
IEEE 802.18 Radio Regulatory TAG
IEEE 802.19 Coexistence TAG
IEEE 802.20 Mobile Broadband Wireless Access
IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handoff
IEEE 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Network
In the IEEE 802.11 Working Group, the following IEEE Standards and Amendments exist: IEEE Working group Description
802.11 The original wlan standard 1 Mbit/s and 2 Mbit/s, 2.4 GHz RF and IR standard
802.11a 54 Mbit/s, 5 GHz standard
802.11b Enhancements to
802.11 to support 5.5 and 11 Mbit/s
802.11c Bridge operation procedures; included in the IEEE 802.1D standard 802.11d International (country-to-country) roaming extensions
802.11e Enhancements: QoS, including packet bursting
802.11F Inter-Access Point Protocol (withdrawn in February 2006)
802.11g 54 Mbit/s, 2.4 GHz standard (backwards compatible with 802.11b)
802.11h Spectrum Managed 802.11a (5 GHz) for European compatibility
802.11i Enhanced security 802.11j Extensions for Japan 802.11k Radio resource measurement enhancements 802.11l Reserved and will not be used
802.11m Maintenance of the standard 802.11n Higher throughput improvements using MIMO 802.11o Reserved and will not be used 802.11p
WAVE: Wireless Access for the Vehicular Environment
802.11q Not used because it can be confused with 802.1Q VLAN trunking
802.11r Fast roaming Working “Task Group r” 802.11s ESS Extended
Service Set Mesh Networking