How Wi-Fi Sends Data Over Air

Wi-Fi lets devices join a network without cables by sending data as radio waves through the air. Instead of electrical signals on copper, a wireless device transmits and receives radio signals to and from an access point. This lesson explains the basics of how Wi-Fi carries network traffic over the air, the foundation for everything else in wireless networking.

At its heart, Wi-Fi encodes your data, ones and zeros, onto radio waves using a process called modulation. The device varies properties of the wave to represent bits, transmits it, and the receiver decodes the wave back into data. This is the same fundamental idea behind radio and TV broadcasting, applied to two-way network communication between devices and access points.