802.11 Frame types

802.11 Frames are devided into three categories.

1. Managment Frames
2. Control frames.
3. Data Frames

1. Management Frames

•    Managment Frames are used by Wireless stations to join and Leave the Basic Service Set
•    Another name for Managment Frames is "MAC protocol Data Unit"(MMPDU)
•    There is no MSDU encapsulated in the MMPDU frame body , which carries only layer2 information fileds and information elements

   Following are the list of all 12 of the Managment frame subtypes as defined by 802.11 standard

    Assosiation Request
    Assosiation Response
    Reassosiation Request
    Reassosiation Response
    Probe request
    Probe Response
    Beacon
    Announcement Traffic Indication Message(ATIM)
    Disassosiation
    Authentication
    Deauthenication
    Action

2. Control Frames

•     802.11 Control frames assit with the delivery of the data frames. 
•     Control frames must be heard by all the stations, therefore they must be transmitted at one of the basic rates
•     Control frames are also used to clear the channel,acquire the channel and provide the unicast frame acknowledgements
•     They contain only header information

    Following are the list of control frame subtypes as defined by 802.11 standard

    Power Save(PS) Poll
    Request to Send (RTS)
    Clear to send (CTS)
    Acknowledgement(ACK)
    Contention-Free(CF)-End (PCF only)
    CF-End+CF-ACK (PCF only)
    Black-ACK(HCF)
    Black Ack Request(HCF)

3.Data Frames

•    Most of the Data Frames carry actual data that is passed down from higher layer protocols
•    Some 802.11 data frames contain no data at all but do have a specfific purpose within BSS
•    There are 15 data frame subtypes 

Data
Data+CF-Ack (PCF only)
Data+CF-Poll (PCF only)
Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll (PCF only)
Null data (no data transmitted)
CF-Ack (no data transmitted) (PCF only)
CF-Poll (no data transmitted) (PCF only)
Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll (PCF only)
Qos Data (HCF)
Qos Null (No Data) (HCF)
Qos Data+CF-Ack (HCF)
 Qos Data+CF-Poll (HCF)
 Qos Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll (HCF)
Qos Cf-Poll(HCF)
Qos CF-ACK+CF-Poll (HCF)


See some of below combination for different frame types.

Thanks to :

http://ilovewifi.blogspot.in/2012/07/80211-frame-types.html