IEEE 802.11n-2009

Timeline

The following are milestones in the development of 802.11n:

September 11, 2002: The first meeting of the High-Throughput Study Group (HTSG) was held. Earlier in the year, in the Wireless Next Generation standing committee (WNG SC), presentations were heard on why they need change and what the target throughput would be required to justify the amendments. Compromise was reached in May 2002 to delay the start of the Study Group until September to allow 11g to complete major work during the July 2002 session.

September 11, 2003: The IEEE-SA New Standards Committee (NesCom) approved the Project Authorization Request (PAR) for the purpose of amending the 802.11-2007 standard. The new 802.11 Task Group (TGn) is to develop a new amendment. The TGn amendment is based on IEEE Std 802.11-2007, as amended by IEEE Std 802.11k-2008, IEEE Std 802.11r-2008, IEEE Std 802.11y-2008 and IEEE P802.11w. TGn will be the 5th amendment to the 802.11-2007 standard. The scope of this project is to define an amendment that shall define standardized modifications to both the 802.11 physical layers (PHY) and the 802.11 Medium Access Control Layer (MAC) so that modes of operation can be enabled that are capable of much higher throughputs, with a maximum throughput of at least 100 Mbit/s, as measured at the MAC data service access point (SAP).

March 2005: Proposals were downselected to a single proposal, but there is not a 75% consensus on the one proposal. Further efforts were expended over the next 3 sessions without being able to agree on one proposal.

July 2005: Previous competitors TGn Sync, WWiSE, and a third group, MITMOT, said that they would merge their respective proposals as a draft. The standardization process was expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2009.

January 19, 2006: The IEEE 802.11n Task Group approved the Joint Proposal's specification, enhanced by EWC's draft specification.

March 2006: IEEE 802.11 Working Group sent the 802.11n draft to its first letter ballot, allowing the 500+ 802.11 voters to review the document and suggest bug fixes, changes, and improvements.

May 2, 2006: The IEEE 802.11 Working Group voted not to forward draft 1.0 of the proposed 802.11n standard. Only 46.6% voted to approve the ballot. To proceed to the next step in the IEEE standards process, a majority vote of 75% is required. This letter ballot also generated approximately 12,000 comments—many more than anticipated.

November 2006: TGn voted to accept draft version 1.06, incorporating all accepted technical and editorial comment resolutions prior to this meeting. An additional 800 comment resolutions were approved during the November session which will be incorporated into the next revision of the draft. As of this meeting, three of the 18 comment topic ad hoc groups chartered in May had completed their work, and 88% of the technical comments had been resolved, with approximately 370 remaining.

January 19, 2007: The IEEE 802.11 Working Group unanimously (100 yes, 0 no, 5 abstaining) approved a request by the 802.11n Task Group to issue a new draft 2.0 of the proposed standard. Draft 2.0 was based on the Task Group's working draft version 1.10. Draft 2.0 was at this point in time the cumulative result of thousands of changes to the 11n document as based on all previous comments.

February 7, 2007: The results of Letter Ballot 95, a 15-day Procedural vote, passed with 97.99% approval and 2.01% disapproval. On the same day, 802.11 Working Group announced the opening of Letter Ballot 97. It invited detailed technical comments to closed on 9 March 2007.

March 9, 2007: Letter Ballot 97, the 30-day Technical vote to approve draft 2.0, closed. They were announced by IEEE 802 leadership during the Orlando Plenary on 12 March 2007. The ballot passed with an 83.4% approval, above the 75% minimum approval threshold. There were still approximately 3,076 unique comments, which were to be individually examined for incorporation into the next revision of draft 2.

June 25, 2007: The Wi-Fi Alliance announced its official certification program for devices based on draft 2.0.

September 7, 2007: Task Group agreed on all outstanding issues for draft 2.07. Draft 3.0 is authorized, with the expectation that it go to a sponsor ballot in November 2007.

November 2007: Draft 3.0 approved (240 voted affirmative, 43 negative, and 27 abstained). The editor was authorized to produce draft 3.01.

January 2008: Draft 3.02 approved. This version incorporates previously approved technical and editorial comments. There remain 127 unresolved technical comments. It was expected that all remaining comments will be resolved and that TGn and WG11 would subsequently release draft 4.0 for working group recirculation ballot following the March meeting.

July 2008: Draft 5.0 approved and anticipated publication timeline modified.

January 2009: Draft 7.0 forwarded to sponsor ballot; the sponsor ballot was approved (158 for, 45 against, 21 abstaining); 241 comments were received.

March 2009: Draft 8.0 proceeded to sponsor ballot recirculation; the ballot passed by an 80.1% majority (75% required) (228 votes received, 169 approve, 42 not approve); 277 members are in the sponsor ballot pool; The comment resolution committee resolved the 77 comments received, and authorized the editor to create a draft 9.0 for further balloting.

April 4, 2009: Draft 9.0 passed sponsor ballot recirculation; the ballot passed by an 80.7% majority (75% required) (233 votes received, 171 approve, 41 not approve); 277 members are in the sponsor ballot pool; The comment resolution committee is resolving the 23 new comments received, and will authorize the editor to create a new draft for further balloting.

July 17, 2009: Final WG Approval passed with 53 approve, 1 against, 6 abstain. Unanimous approval to send Final WG draft 11.0 to RevCom.

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IEEE 802.11n-2009 - Timeline