802.11

WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORKS

The Working Group for WLAN Standards

Upcoming sessions

2025 May IEEE 802 Wireless Interim Session May 11-16, 2025 Warsaw Presidential Hotel Warsaw, Poland Register to attend (in-person or remote)

The meetings between now and the upcoming session will be held by teleconference.

Working group ballots and comment collections

None at present.

IEEE SA ballots

None at present.

Recent activities

802.11 members Jerome Henry, Brian Hart, Binita Gupta and Malcolm Smith have written a detailed guide to IEEE Std 802.11be-2024, known in the industry as Wi-Fi 7.

The IEEE SASB has approved

  • IEEE Std 802.11™-2024, a revision to our standard that rolls in all previously published amendments and contains numerous fixes and enhancements
  • IEEE Std 802.11bh™-2024, an amendment that improves operation with random and changing MAC addresses
  • IEEE Std 802.11be™-2024, an amendment that is the basis for Wi-Fi 7
The approved documents will go through publication editing and should be available early 2025.

A summary of our work at the March 9-14, 2025 plenary session in Atlanta, GA, USA is as follows:

  • P802.11bf (WLAN Sensing) and P802.11bk (320 MHz Positioning) both received conditional approval to forward their draft standards to RevCom. We expect each of these projects to complete one more SA ballot and then seek review by RevCom and approval from the SASB for publication.
  • P802.11bi (Enhanced Privacy) recently completed their initial working group (WG) ballot on D1.0. The ballot passed with an 89% approval rate. The task group is resolving comments from this ballot and expects to be ready for a recirculation ballot on D2.0 coming out of the July 2025 session.
  • At the January 2025 session, TGbn (Ultra High Reliability, aka Wi-Fi 8) approved a draft D0.1. They conducted a comment collection on this early draft and having been working through those comments to improve the draft quality and prepare it for its initial working group ballot, expected out of the May 2025 session.
  • The enhanced light communications (ELC) study group received WG and 802 LMSC approval for their P802.11br project authorization request (PAR). The PAR is being considered by NesCom and we expect the work on P802.11br to start at the May 2025 session.
  • The 802.11 WG and 802 LMSC approved the formation of a Post-Quantum Cryptography PAR Study Group. The PQC SG will work on a project authorization request (PAR) to harden 802.11 security for a future world in which quantum computing-based attacks are feasible.

A more detailed report is available here.

Recent standards approvals

IEEE Std 802.11be™-2024 was approved on September 26, 2024. Publication expected soon.

IEEE Std 802.11bh™-2024 was approved on September 26, 2024. Publication expected soon.

IEEE Std 802.11™-2024 was approved on September 26, 2024. Publication expected soon.

IEEE Std 802.11bc™-2023 (incorporating IEEE Std 802.11-2020/Cor 2-2024) was published on February 28, 2024.

IEEE Std 802.11bb™-2023 was published on November 10, 2023.

IEEE Std 802.11bd™-2022 was published on March 10, 2023.

IEEE Std 802.11az™-2022 was published on March 3, 2023.

IEEE Std 802.11™-2020/Cor 1-2022 was published on December 27, 2022.

IEEE Std 802.11ba™-2021 was published on October 8, 2021.

IEEE Std 802.11ay™-2021 was published on July 28, 2021.

IEEE Std 802.11ax™-2021 was published on May 19, 2021.

IEEE Std 802.11™-2020, was published February 26, 2021.

Congratulations to the many 802.11 members who participated in development of these standards. Please visit the photographs page to see pictures of the leadership and major contributors receiving their awards.

"Click Here" for IEEE 802 Free Standards

The IEEE has made available IEEE 802 standards for free download. Under this program, a standard may be downloaded for free six months after the initial publication of the standard. All relevant IEEE 802.11 Standard, Amendments, and Recommended Practices are listed.

Liaison statements and external communications

Recent liaison statements and communications are available here.

Access to 802.11 draft standards

Draft standards are available from a number of sources:

  • If you are a voting 802.11 member, go to the members' area and log in using the 802.11 members ID and password supplied to you by the 802.11 officers.  Contact Robert Stacey if you have lost this. During an 802.11 session, attendees may access 802.11 draft standards from a local fileserver, regardless of their membership status.
  • If you are an active member of one of the other 802 groups, you may be able to access the 802.11 members' area using the same credentials used to access your own group. If this doesn't work, ask your group's Chair to request access from the 802.11 Chair (Robert Stacey).
  • Draft IEEE standards are, from time to time, made available for purchase using the IEEE store or Techstreet.

IEEE standards development guide

The IEEE-SA has created an easy to use Online Standards Development web site that has a wealth of information that details the whole standards process flow, from creation of the initial PAR, to balloting to final draft, and beyond. It even includes, tutorials, and online forms of the various processes evolved. This site is recommended for all Members and Chairs involved.

Upcoming meetings

A google calendar (embedded below) is maintained for 802.11 meetings.

You can import the calendar as an iCal file, or use the "Add to Google Calendar" at the bottom right of the calendar below.

The 802 calendar, which contains the 802 meetings and also rolls up the working group calendars, is available here.