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Appendix A: FAQ about WLAN
1. What is Spread Spectrum?
Spread Spectrum technology is a wideband radio frequency technique developed by the military
for use in reliable, secure, mission-critical communications systems. It is designed to trade off
bandwidth efficiency for reliability, integrity, and security. In other words, more bandwidth is
consumed than in the case of narrowband transmission, but the trade-off produces a signal that is,
in effect, louder and thus easier to detect, provided that the receiver knows the parameters of the
spread-spectrum signal being broadcast. If a receiver is not tuned to the right frequency, a
spread-spectrum signal looks like background noise. There are two main alternatives, Direct
Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS).
2. What is DSSS? What is FHSS? And what are their differences?
Frequency-Hopping Spread-Spectrum (FHSS) uses a narrowband carrier that changes frequency
in a pattern that is known to both transmitter and receiver. Properly synchronized, the net effect is
to maintain a single logical channel. To an unintended receiver, FHSS appears to be
short-duration impulse noise. Direct-Sequence Spread-Spectrum (DSSS) generates a redundant
bit pattern for each bit to be transmitted. This bit pattern is called a chip (or chipping code). The
longer the chip, the greater the probability that the original data can be recovered. Even if one or
more bits in the chip are damaged during transmission, statistical techniques embedded in the
radio can recover the original data without the need for retransmission. To an unintended receiver,
DSSS appears as low power wideband noise and is rejected (ignored) by most narrowband
receivers.
3. Would the information be intercepted while transmitting on air?
WLAN features two-fold protection in security. On the hardware side, as with Direct Sequence
Spread Spectrum technology, it has the inherent security feature of scrambling. On the software
side, WLAN offers the encryption function (WEP) to enhance security and access control.
4. What is WEP?
WEP is Wired Equivalent Privacy, a data privacy mechanism based on a 64-bit or 128-bit shared
key algorithm, as described in the IEEE 802.11 standard.
5. What is infrastructure mode?
When a wireless network is set to infrastructure mode, the wireless network is configured to
communicate with a wired network through a wireless access point.
