Universal broadband home network for scalable ieee 802.11 based wireless and wireline networking

Abstract

The present home networking method and system is based on the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard expanded to encompass home phone line media communication and/or home power line media communication operation seamlessly. For each station in home network (i.e., wireless, phone line and power line), the protocol stack at the PHY layer and above, QoS, and network security are all based on the 802.11 standard. Chipset implementations differ in an applied analog interface that is specific to the respective medium. Station-to-station transmission between wireless and wired terminals is enabled via an intelligent access point which includes an analog interface for each of the medium types. Further, each station can be configured with the appropriate analog interface to communicate directly with any wireless station. The access point is also expandable to form extended service sets.