WiFi and WiMAX - break through in wireless access technologies

Data in the good old days was only the stepchild of telephone network, the speech being the main child. This scenario gradually changed with data acquiring important place and this gave rise to access technologies. Data volumes to be transported were constantly on the rise due to computers becoming more and more sophisticated and graduating from mainframe to PCs and necessitating ever growing need for computer- to- computer communication at higher and higher bit rates. All this led to wireless data communication technologies like Wi-Fi and WiMax which combine the techniques developed for modems, LANs, WANs, MANs with the wireless technologies. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the various technologies that have gone into high speed wireless data communication and led to significantly higher data speeds and to look at the IEEE WiFi and WiMax standards.