The ISO/IEC 8802-11:1999(E) specification
1 uses a 32-bit CRC for error detection and
whole-packet retransmissions for recovery. In long-distance or
high-interference links where the probability of a bit error is high,
this strategy results in excessive losses, because any erroneous bit
causes an entire packet to be discarded. By ignoring the CRC and
adding redundancy to 802.11 payloads in software, we achieved
substantially reduced loss rates on indoor and outdoor long-distance
links and extended line-of-sight range outdoors by 70 percent.
