All, I am a bit confused by two papers I have recently read. The first paper form Atheros states that for a given range 11a gives about 4x the throughput or data rate than 11b. The paper leads me to believe that the power usage is similar in that it states that the power output to the antennas they used in the tests are approximately the same. So reading this paper leads one to believe that 11a is a clear winner.
HOWEVER... Another paper from Mobilian seems to state the opposite. The paper basically stated that for a given power and throughput, 11a gives you about 1/4 the range. I also read another article (Duking it Out) indicating that 11a was more power efficient because it needed less time to transmit a signal, thus while the power required to generate the signal was more for 11a than 11b, the overall power used was less because of the time difference. I do NOT have an 11a implementation to test this stuff with, so I am coming here for comments... First, are any of these papers just flat wrong? Second, why do they seem to contradict one another? What am I missing? Is 11a really better than 11b? - Can 11a really give you better 4x better rates at the same 11b distance? If so, where is the Mobilian paper wrong? The Mobilian paper really made sense (as I read it first), but after reading the Atheros paper, I am not sure what to believe. Any thoughts and clarifications are appreciated. Phil -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
