Home of RF and Wireless Vendors and Resources

One Stop For Your RF and Wireless Need

WLAN MAC frame types,subtypes

This page describes WLAN MAC frame types and mention WLAN MAC frame subtypes.

WLAN MAC frames are divided into three categories viz. management frame, control frame and data frame. Under management frames there are various frames based on their functionalities such as beacon, association, authentication, probe request and so on. Under control frames there are various frames such as RTS, CTS, ACK etc. Data frames carry data related frames.

The table below mentions type and subtype fields for all of the above categories of the frames.


Type Value Type Description Subtype value Subtype Description
00 Management Frame 0000 Association Request
00 Management Frame 0001 Association response
00 Management Frame 0010 Reassociation Request
00 Management Frame 0011 reassociation Response
00 Management Frame 0100 probe Request
00 Management Frame 0101 probe response
00 Management Frame 0110-0111 reserved
00 Management Frame 1000 Beacon
00 Management Frame 1001 ATIM
00 Management Frame 1010 Disassociation
00 Management Frame 1011 Authentication
00 Management Frame 1100 Deauthentication
00 Management Frame 1101 Action
00 Management Frame 1110-1111 Reserved
01 Control Frame 0000-0111 Reserved
01 Control 1000 Block Ack Request
01 Control 1001 Block Ack
01 Control 1010 PS-Poll
01 Control 1011 RTS
01 Control 1100 CTS
01 Control 1101 ACK
01 Control 1110 CF-End
01 Control 1111 CF-End+CF-Ack
10 Data Frame 0000 Data
10 Data 0001 Data+CF-Ack
10 Data 0010 Data+CF-Poll
10 Data 0011 Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll
10 Data 0100 Null-No data
10 Data 0101 CF-Ack(No Data)
10 Data 0110 CF-Poll(No Data)
10 Data 0111 CF-Ack+CF-Poll(No Data)
10 Data 1000 QoS Data
10 Data 1001 QoS Data+CF-Ack
10 Data 1010 QoS Data+CF-Poll
10 Data 1011 QoS Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll
10 Data 1100 QoS Null(no data)
10 Data 1101 reserveed
10 Data 1110 QoS CF-Poll(No data)
10 Data 1111 QoS CF-Ack+CF-Poll (No Data)
11 Reserved 0000-1111 Reserved

WLAN MAC frames Links

WLAN Association Request and response frame
WLAN authentication Request and deauthentication frame
WLAN beacon frame
WLAN passive vs active scanning frame
WLAN Probe Request and response frame
WLAN reassociation Request and response frame
WLAN RTS and CTS frame

What is Difference between

FIR filter Vs. IIR filter
difference between FDM and OFDM
Difference between SC-FDMA and OFDM
Difference between SISO and MIMO
Difference between TDD and FDD
Difference between 802.11 standards viz.11-a,11-b,11-g and 11-n
OFDM vs OFDMA
CDMA vs GSM
Bluetooth vs zigbee

Other Standard MAC layer protocol

WIMAX MAC PROTOCOL
WLAN MAC LAYER PROTOCOL PART1
WLAN MAC LAYER PROTOCOL PART2
ZIGBEE MAC LAYER FRAME
BLUETOOTH MAC LAYER
802.11AC MAC LAYER

RF and Wireless Terminologies