3. Wi-Fi Fundamentals: RF and PHY Intro

802 covers two lower OSI layers, namely datalink and physical layer. 802.11, which is our main Focus, covers fully PHY layer and part of datalink, namely MAC.

Let’s see what each layer roughly deals with.

MAC layer operates on messages containing headers and data payload, it generates beacons, probes, qos and overall medium access procedures

PHY layers operates on bits and transforms them into symbols, it divides bits into OFDM subcarriers, create radio frame, encodes bits

RF creates signal on specific carrier frequency, measures signals powers.