The coming IEEE 802.11v standard will introduce new power savings features that will “green up” wireless LANs, according to Matthew Gast, Trapeze Networks’ principal engineer, office of the CTO, and the chair of Wi-Fi Alliance Wireless Network Management and Security Technical task groups.
Trapeze Networks cited a number of energy efficiency measures in the upcoming standard, including:
- Wireless Network Management Sleep Mode, a further extension to base 802.11 power savings that will allow for longer power-off times for 802.11 radios. It will be used in conjunction with new Traffic Filtering Service to enable access points to deliver only specified frame types.
- “Wake on WLAN” capabilities that let network managers “wake up” wireless computers and other appliances.
- Proxy ARP that will let an access point respond to ARP requests enabling stations to power down for longer periods.
- TIM Broadcast that will distribute traffic indication maps so stations do not need to receive every beacon frame.
- Flexible Broadcast / Multicast services that will send broadcast / multicast frames at the highest data rate for the group of receivers thereby reducing power-on time for radio interfaces and allow for higher data rates that improve performance of multicast applications.
The 802.11v standard is also expected to include station management features that will give network managers a much more detailed view of network performance and new location features that will offer more accuracy for services like RFID and emergency services.
Trapeze Networks said the 802.11v standard is expected to be finished in 2010.
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