this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Recognize the mother of Wifi (i.imgflip.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
146 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What's your evidence, Richard Easton??!?

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

https://www.ieee802.org/11/Documents/DocumentArchives/1996_docs/1196049D_scan.pdf

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum PHY of the 802.11 Wireless LAN Standard

Edit: [email protected] is correct. FHSS was quickly dropped for DSSS and OFDM, and FHSS is not used in any modern WiFi specs. You can see the list in table 7.6 here https://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1329709&seqNum=4

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It may be dropped, but it was used in the beginning

Wouldn't that not still make her the mother of Wifi?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Hehehe, you can call her the mother of early 802.11 and Bluetooth.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

that's not how it works. edit: others pointed it out already it seems. you would still call the inventor of a first car the father lf cars even though it has nothing to do with modern cars

edit2: but considering that she didn't really invent wifi, just frequency hopping, I would maybe call her grandmother or something

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

She didn't invent frequency hopping, Nicola Tesla did. She invented a system that used a piano roll (from a player piano) to alternate frequencies. Also she shared the patent with another person.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Or rather she was part of a team, with her husband and one more, that patented that idea, never really got it to work in real torpedos, and the technology was forgotten until someone referred to it in a later patent. Then her role as background got expanded to take the role of other more influential women, maybe because she had a nicer picture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah, I think I get it. I mean the analogy is a bit flawed. What she invented is that alike synchronizing the rolls of player pianos, you could build a mechanism that hops frequencies (instead of piano keys) to make remote controlling torpedos resilient against jamming.

Idk. To me it feels like calling the inventor of three-wheeled vehicles the father/mother of cars, if we want to stay with that analogy. It's remotely related, not an integral part and nowadays solved differently. But the first car was a tricycle. (Benz Patent-Motorwagen)

But I don't want to invalidate her achievements either... It's one (important) contribution to technology. And it's not always that one single person invents the whole concept of a radio. Or a car. And get's to be the whole parent of it. Things build upon each other. Sometimes it needs a lot of contributions of several individuals to make something possible... Nowadays more so than in the old times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

For the Bluetooth development, the developers of the technology didn't know about her patent until their IP department was about to file for a patent. They added this patent to the list and then they got connected. As is the case with many, patent and patent connections. It's a quite common way of how patents are connected, and part of the IP industry. R&D people come up with an idea, these people don't read tons of patents but solve issues in an intuitive way. Then IP lawers dig into existing patents and make the legal connections.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

But that's not part of 802.11n or 802.11g or "a" or what we call "Wifi"... 802.11 in itself is a pretty long standard, including all kinds of different things.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

I am not literally a part of my kids, but they wouldn't be here without me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

but still, without frequency hopping no 802.11, without 802.11 no wifi

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

It actually is. The original standard published by the IEEE 802.11 group was 802.11, often referred to as 802.11 prime.

To put it simply, it was little more than a proof of concept. The only wireless cards that I know were made at that time, were very expensive and only purchased in very limited amounts by large corporations. Quickly afterwards it was replaced by 802.11a and 802.11b. the big difference between the two, was that b used 2.4ghz and could achieve 11mbps, while a used 5Ghz, and could achieve 54mbps.

Meanwhile prime was on 900mhz and if memory serves, never achieved more than a few Mbps.

802.11b was more popular because 2.4ghz was easier to make inexpensively at the time, and so 802.11g also used 2.4ghz, but was able to increase bandwidth by using OFDM. But now I'm off topic, I just find wireless history very interesting.

The point is 802.11 (prime) was a valid wireless standard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Just chiming in as a network tech that deals with these terms regularly.

802.11, sometimes called 802.11 prime, to differentiate the first protocol from the 802.11 (WiFi) group. This protocol was not really every in widespread use. A few early niche cases, but it was quickly supplanted by 802.11a and 802.11b.

The b standard was one of the first major WiFi versions to see adoption, which used DSSS, or direct sequence spread spectrum. Which fell by the wayside because OFDM was faster and more efficient, which led wifi speed increases from 802.11g, through wifi 4 (802.11n), WiFi 5 (802.11ac), and WiFi 6 (802.11ax). The more recent versions use QAM (wireless N+), which augments OFDM with amplitude modulation.

Beyond QAM, speed improvements at this point are minimal and usually require wider channel widths to get any significant improvement, so 802.11 has focused on multiple access improvements and since 802.11ac, have been making improvements to MIMO. They started with SU-MIMO, then one-way MU-MIMO, then two way MU-MIMO.

I haven't read up on the changes in WiFi 7 yet beyond 6Ghz being added. I'll look into it after it's been fully ratified.

Long story short, they moved to 5Ghz and eventually 6Ghz, because there isn't enough channel width in 2.4 for WiFi 5, and 5ghz was getting a bit difficult to sustain for the speed they're trying to hit, so 6Ghz is the next logical step.