Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks

Wireless Wavelength

It is important to be able to visualize the physical size of a wireless signal because the physical size of each signal determines how that signal interacts with its environment and how well it is propagated from antenna to antenna within the wireless network. The signal's physical size also determines how large or how small the antennas that transmit and receive the signal must be; the smaller the signal size, the smaller the antenna.

Figure 2-2 shows two wireless signals on two different frequencies—2.45 GHz and 5.775 GHz. All wireless signals travel through the air at the same speed. That speed is the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second (300,000,000 meters per second). The distance that a radio signal travels ...