Beginner Free 10 hours

Wi-Fi 802.11 Fundamentals: MAC, PHY, and Airtime

Frames, medium access, OFDM, throughput, and hardware reality.

A rigorous beginner course on the end-to-end Wi-Fi system view from MAC framing and medium access through OFDM PHY processing and hardware partitioning. The curriculum is grounded in the curated technical references and preserves their technical depth, code, diagrams, decision rules, and failure analysis. Every lesson adds objectives, an applied lab, review questions, and concrete completion evidence. The course closes with a substantial capstone: Analyze a Wi-Fi packet exchange and produce a MAC-to-PHY timing and airtime model with failure cases.

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What you will learn

Leave with a working mental model.

  1. 01 Explain 802.11 architecture, generations, addressing, and frame formats
  2. 02 Trace DCF, CSMA/CA, NAV, acknowledgements, and aggregation
  3. 03 Describe the OFDM transmit and receive datapaths
  4. 04 Calculate airtime and identify common hardware bottlenecks

Before you begin

Prerequisites

  • Digital communications fundamentals are helpful
  • Basic networking
  • Binary arithmetic

Curriculum

Course contents

7 modules · 21 lessons

01 Module 1: System View 3 lessons
  1. 01 Wi-Fi 802.11 Overview and Architecture Preview
  2. 02 Wi-Fi 802.11 Generations Preview
  3. 03 Wi-Fi MAC-PHY Interface
02 Module 2: MAC Frame Basics 2 lessons
  1. 01 Wi-Fi MAC Frame Format
  2. 02 Wi-Fi Addressing and DS Bits
03 Module 3: Medium Access 3 lessons
  1. 01 Wi-Fi DCF and CSMA/CA
  2. 02 Wi-Fi Timing, IFS, and NAV
  3. 03 Wi-Fi EDCA and QoS
04 Module 4: Throughput Features 3 lessons
  1. 01 Wi-Fi Aggregation and Block Ack
  2. 02 Wi-Fi Performance and Airtime
  3. 03 Wi-Fi Rate Control and MCS
05 Module 5: PHY Datapath 4 lessons
  1. 01 Wi-Fi PHY Architecture
  2. 02 Wi-Fi OFDM and PLCP
  3. 03 Wi-Fi Synchronization and Channel Estimation
  4. 04 Wi-Fi Channel Coding and Interleaving
06 Module 6: Hardware Reality 4 lessons
  1. 01 Wi-Fi RF Front End and Calibration
  2. 02 Wi-Fi Security Engine Hardware
  3. 03 Wi-Fi Common Hardware Pitfalls
  4. 04 Wi-Fi Verification and Debug
07 Module 7: Capstone Studio 2 lessons
  1. 01 Capstone Brief and Architecture
  2. 02 Validation, Review, and Definition of Done