HIPERLAN

HiperLAN (High Performance Radio LAN) is a Wireless LAN standard. It is a European alternative for the IEEE 802.11 standards (the IEEE is an international organization). It is defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). In ETSI the standards are defined by the BRAN project (Broadband Radio Access Networks). The HiperLAN standard family has four different versions.

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 and the Media Access Control part of the Data link layer 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 to function with few collisions even though there would be a large number of users. Multimedia applications work in HiperLAN because of EY-NPMA priority mechanism. MAC layer defines protocols for routing, security and power saving and provides naturally data transfer to the upper layers.

On the physical layer FSK and GMSK modulations are used in HiperLAN/1.

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