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The 802.11a standard is designed to operate in the 5-GHz frequency range. Specifically, the FCC has allocated 300 MHz of spectrum for unlicensed operation in the 5-GHz block, 200 MHz of which is at 5.15 MHz to 5.35 MHz, with the other 100 MHz at 5.725 MHz to 5.825 MHz. The spectrum is split into three working "domains." The first 100 MHz in the lower section is restricted to a maximum power output of 50 mW (milliwatts). The second 100 MHz has a more generous 250-mW power budget, while the top 100 MHz is delegated for outdoor applications, with a maximum of 1-watt power output. In contrast, 802.11b cards can radiate as much as 1 watt in the United States. However, most modern cards radiate only a fraction (30 mW) of the maximum available power for reasons of battery conservation and heat dissipation.

Although segmented, the total bandwidth available for IEEE 802.11a applications is almost four times that of the ISM band; the ISM band offers only 83 MHz of spectrum in the 2.4 GHz range, while the newly allocated UNII band offers 300 MHz. The 802.11b spectrum is plagued by saturation from wireless phones, microwave ovens and other emerging wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth. In contrast, 802.11a has an ace up its sleeve: Its spectrum is relatively free of interference, at least for now. Only time will tell whether the 5-GHz band will become just as crowded as the 2.4-GHz band.

The 802.11a standard gains some of its performance from the higher frequencies at which it operates. The laws of information theory tie frequency, radiated power and distance together in an inverse relationship. Thus, moving up to the 5-GHz spectrum from 2.4 GHz will lead to shorter distances, given the same radiated power and encoding scheme. In addition, the encoding mechanism used to convert data into analog radio waves can encode one or more bits per radio cycle (hertz). By rotating and manipulating the radio signal, vendors can encode more information in the same time slice. To ensure that the remote host can decode these more complex radio signals, you must use more power at the source to compensate for signal distortion and fade. The 802.11a technology overcomes some of the distance loss by increasing the EIRP to the maximum 50 mW.

However, power alone is not enough to maintain 802.11b-like distances in an 802.11a environment. To compensate, vendors specified and designed a new physical-layer encoding technology that departs from the traditional direct-sequence technology being deployed today. This technology is called COFDM (coded OFDM). COFDM was developed specifically for indoor wireless use and offers performance much superior to that of spread-spectrum solutions. COFDM works by breaking one high-speed data carrier into several lower-speed subcarriers, which are then transmitted in parallel. Each high-speed carrier is 20 MHz wide (see "Subchannels" graphic) and is broken up into 52 subchannels, each approximately 300 KHz wide (see "Independent Clear Channels" graphic). COFDM uses 48 of these subchannels for data, while the remaining four are used for error correction. COFDM delivers higher data rates and a high degree of multipath reflection recovery, thanks to its encoding scheme and error correction.

Each subchannel in the COFDM implementation is about 300 KHz wide. At the low end of the speed gradient, BPSK (binary phase shift keying) is used to encode 125 Kbps of data per channel, resulting in a 6,000-Kbps, or 6 Mbps, data rate. Using quadrature phase shift keying, you can double the amount of data encoded to 250 Kbps per channel, yielding a 12-Mbps data rate. And by using 16-level quadrature amplitude modulation encoding 4 bits per hertz, you can achieve a data rate of 24 Mbps. The 802.11a standard specifies that all 802.11a-compliant products must support these basic data rates. The standard also lets the vendor extend the modulation scheme beyond 24 Mbps. Remember, the more bits per cycle (hertz) that are encoded, the more susceptible the signal will be to interference and fading, and ultimately, the shorter the range, unless power output is increased.