HiperLAN is a Wireless LAN

Wireless LAN

A wireless local area network links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method , and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network...

 standard. It is a Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an alternative for the IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11 is a set of standards for implementing wireless local area network computer communication in the 2.4, 3.6 and 5 GHz frequency bands. They are created and maintained by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee . The base version of the standard IEEE 802.11-2007 has had subsequent...

 standards (the IEEE is an international organization). It is defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute

European Telecommunications Standards Institute

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute is an independent, non-profit, standardization organization in the telecommunications industry in Europe, with worldwide projection...

 (ETSI). In ETSI the standards are defined by the BRAN project (Broadband Radio Access Networks). The HiperLAN standard family has four different versions.

HiperLAN/1

Planning for the first version of the standard, called HiperLAN/1, started 1991, when planning of 802.11 was already going on. The goal of the HiperLAN was the high data rate, higher than 802.11. The standard was approved in 1996. The functional specification is EN300652, the rest is in ETS300836.

The standard covers the Physical layer

Physical layer

The physical layer or layer 1 is the first and lowest layer in the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking. The implementation of this layer is often termed PHY....

 and the Media Access Control

Media Access Control

The media access control data communication protocol sub-layer, also known as the medium access control, is a sublayer of the data link layer specified in the seven-layer OSI model , and in the four-layer TCP/IP model...

 part of the Data link layer

Data link layer

The data link layer is layer 2 of the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking. It corresponds to, or is part of the link layer of the TCP/IP reference model....

 like 802.11. There is a new sublayer called Channel Access and Control sublayer (CAC). This sublayer deals with the access requests to the channels. The accomplishing of the request is dependent on the usage of the channel and the priority of the request.

CAC layer provides hierarchical independence with Elimination-Yield Non-Preemptive Multiple Access mechanism (EY-NPMA). EY-NPMA codes priority choices and other functions into one variable length radio pulse preceding the packet data. EY-NPMA enables the network

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

 to function with few collisions even though there would be a large number of users. Multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 applications work in HiperLAN because of EY-NPMA priority mechanism. MAC layer defines protocols for routing

Routing

Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the telephone network , electronic data networks , and transportation networks...

, security and power saving and provides naturally data transfer to the upper layers.

On the physical layer FSK

Frequency-shift keying

Frequency-shift keying is a frequency modulation scheme in which digital information is transmitted through discrete frequency changes of a carrier wave. The simplest FSK is binary FSK . BFSK uses a pair of discrete frequencies to transmit binary information. With this scheme, the "1" is called...

 and GMSK modulations are used in HiperLAN/1.

HiperLAN features:

• range 50 m
• slow mobility (1.4 m/s)
• supports asynchronous and synchronous traffic
• sound 32 kbit/s, 10 ns latency
• video 2 Mbit/s, 100 ns latency
• data 10 Mbit/s

HiperLAN does not conflict with microwave and other kitchen appliances, which are on 2.4GHz.

HiperLAN/2

HiperLAN/2 functional specification was accomplished February 2000. Version 2 is designed as a fast wireless connection for many kinds of networks. Those are UMTS back bone network, ATM

Asynchronous Transfer Mode

Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...

 and IP

Internet Protocol

The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

 networks. Also it works as a network at home like HiperLAN/1. HiperLAN/2 uses the 5 GHz band and up to 54 Mbit/s data rate.

The physical layer of HiperLAN/2 is very similar to IEEE 802.11a wireless local area networks. However, the media access control

Media Access Control

The media access control data communication protocol sub-layer, also known as the medium access control, is a sublayer of the data link layer specified in the seven-layer OSI model , and in the four-layer TCP/IP model...

 (the multiple access protocol) is Dynamic TDMA in HiperLAN/2, while CSMA/CA is used in 802.11a.

Basic services in HiperLAN/2 are data, sound, and video transmission. The emphasis is in the quality of these services (QoS

Quality of service

The quality of service refers to several related aspects of telephony and computer networks that allow the transport of traffic with special requirements...

).

The standard covers Physical, Data Link Control and Convergence layers. Convergence layer takes care of service dependent functionality between DLC and Network layer (OSI 3). Convergence sublayers can be used also on the physical layer to connect IP, ATM or UMTS networks. This feature makes HiperLAN/2 suitable for the wireless connection of various networks.

On the physical layer BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM

Quadrature amplitude modulation

Quadrature amplitude modulation is both an analog and a digital modulation scheme. It conveys two analog message signals, or two digital bit streams, by changing the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation analog...

 or 64QAM modulations are used.

HiperLAN/2 offers security measures. The data are secured with DES

Data Encryption Standard

The Data Encryption Standard is a block cipher that uses shared secret encryption. It was selected by the National Bureau of Standards as an official Federal Information Processing Standard for the United States in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. It is...

 or Triple DES

Triple DES

In cryptography, Triple DES is the common name for the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm block cipher, which applies the Data Encryption Standard cipher algorithm three times to each data block....

 algorithms. The wireless access point

Wireless access point

In computer networking, a wireless access point is a device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or related standards...

 and the wireless terminal can authenticate each other.

Most important worldwide manufacturers of HiperLAN/2 are [Alvarion] (Israel), [Motorola] (USA) and SICE (Italy).
3. HyperLan/3:
4. HyperLan/4: