Personal Area Networks and Its Applications

Muhammad Saadat Nawaz Department Of Electrical Engineering, CIIT Lahore.

Abstract
A WPAN (wireless personal area network) is a personal area network - a network for interconnecting devices centered on an individual person's workspace - in which the connections are wireless. Typically, a wireless personal area network uses some technology that permits communication within about 10 meters (33 ft) such as Bluetooth, which was used as the basis for a new standard, IEEE 802.15.A WPAN performs a variety of tasks, in accordance with the requirements of the applications that are being used. A key determinant of PAN success is the application areas that will be the most popular and widespread. This research determines the applications that are most important for the future success of personal area networks.

order to fulfill some task, usually by transmission of data and commands between applications and/or other networks. WPANs operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band at data rates up to 55 Mb/s that are commensurate with distribution of high-definition video and high-fidelity audio. Distinguishing characteristics of a personal area network compared to other wireless networks (e.g., Wi-Fi, cellular) is its ability to operate in a small area, with relatively low power requirements, and mostly in a self-operating manner. The original PAN technology, infrared, has been used for a number of years for application areas such as cable replacement and remote control. Bluetooth is currently the most popular PAN technology, supporting applications that need a higher level of data communication including cable replacement, body area networks, and synchronization. Newer PAN technologies such as ZigBee and Ultra wideband (UWB) also provide a high level of data transfer, but in a larger area and with an increased number of nodes, supporting application areas such as environmental monitoring and smart houses. With the emergence of newer PAN technologies and potential new ways of using PANs, which applications are likely to be the most important in

I.

Introduction

Wireless personal area network is a wireless Operationally, the

network that covers a small geographical area, usually less than 30 meters. Wireless personal area network (WPAN) establishes an ad hoc network which is maintained solely by the self-organizing actions of the participating devices in

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determining the success of personal area networks? Determining the answer to this question is the principal purpose of this research study. Personal Area Network Technologies

PAN Technology infrared Bluetooth ZigBee Ultra wideband

Range (meters) 0.2-1 ~10 ~20 ~30

Speed 2.4 Kbs 16 Mbs 720 Kbs 3 Mbs 250 Kbs 110 Mbs 480Mbits

Power Requirements Low Medium Low Medium

Nodes (max) 1 8 255 255

Ease of joining and leaving an existing Advanced power management to save Low-cost and -complexity MAC and

network battery power PHY implementations optimized for shortrange (less than 10 m) communications Support for high-speed data rates, up to 55Mb/s, for video and high-quality audio transmissions.

II.
The high-rate WPANs may find compelling applications as a cable replacement technology for home entertainment systems capable of highdefinition video and high-fidelity sound, and DVD or high-quality graphics-based interactive games with multiple consoles and virtual reality goggles. The need for communications between these multimediacapable devices leads to peer-to-peer ad hoc type connections that warrant data rates well in excess of 20 Mb/s and quality of service (QoS) provisions with respect to guaranteed bandwidth. Compared to existing wireless LAN systems, the 802.15.3 high-rate WPAN technology possesses desirable features suited for portable communications and electronics devices and their applications. The salient characteristics of the IEEE 802.15.3 high-rate WPAN standard are: Ability to form ad hoc connections with QoS support for multimedia traffic

WIRELESS PERSONAL AREA NETWORKS

A WPAN is a short-range transmission (typically, limited to 10m), low-cost and low-power consumption technology. Unlike UMTS, WPAN operates in the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical frequency band at 2.4 GHz. The IEEE 802.15 working group is standardizing different versions of WPAN: IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) IEEE 802.15.3

A. IEEE802.15 (Bluetooth)
The Bluetooth specification has been made the IEEE 802.15.1 Standard. Hence, Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.1 are synonymous. In the paper, the term Bluetooth is used. Two or more Bluetooth devices

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sharing the same frequency-hopping sequence form a piconet which is a star topology. The smallest unit of a WPAN is known as piconet. Within a piconet, a Bluetooth device can play either one of the two roles: master or slave. Each piconet may only contain one master device and up to seven slave devices. Communication in a piconet is organized in a way that the master device polls each slave according to a certain polling algorithm. A slave device is only allowed to transmit after being polled by the master device as depicted in Figure Different piconet employ different frequency-hopping sequences to prevent mutual interferences. Bluetooth offers a gross bit rate of 1 Mb/s. Bluetooth defines not only a radio interface, but a whole Communication stack that allows devices to find each other and IN| advertise the services they offer. The core Bluetooth protocol stack, which consists of Layer 1 and 2, is illustrated in Figure. Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol (BNEP) provides data an Ethernet- like interface to the upper layer. Communications at the Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP) layer in a piconet can only be between the master device and a slave device. The master device acts as an Ethernet bridge at the BNEP layer forwarding packets that are not destined for itself. BLUETOOTH PICONET ARCHITECTURE

B. IEEE 802.15.3 High Data Rate WPAN

Unlike Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.3 offers high gross bit Bluetooth offers a gross bit rate up to 55 Mb/s. An IEEE 802.15.3 piconet is a distributed topology with a central controller known as Piconet Controller (PNC). The PNC differs from the Bluetooth master in that it is responsible for scheduling the communication between the devices but the data traffic may not pass through the PNC. That means, the devices in the piconet can communicate on a peer-to-peer basis as shown in Figure. Each piconet may only one PNC device and up to 255 slave devices.

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Body area network: A body area network (BAN) is an environment in which mobile networked computing devices travel with a person and can be integrated with the human user . Typically, one or more devices measure changes in the physiology of the person, which are recorded on a memory device for downloading later or wirelessly streamed to a WiFi or cellular network. Body area networks IEEE 802.15.3 PICONET ARCHITECTURE applications exist in sports (e.g., endurance testing), health care (e.g., to detect and record physiological changes), and other areas. The trend is that BAN devices will likely be able to use multiple physical The IEEE 802.15.3 standard only defines Layer 1 and Layer 2, namely the Physical layer and the Medium Access Control layer as shown in Figure. Several issues that influence or inhibit BAN system design are: Sensor resource constraints Intermittent connectivity Reliability of transmission Security Interoperability of different platforms Users compliance of sensor weight and size. PROTOCOL ARCHITECTURE OF BLUETOOTH AND IEEE 802.15.3 Currently, the ideal candidate for BAN technology is UWB because of its characteristics of low-power operation and extremely low radiated power . Cable replacement: The original purpose of PAN technology, short-range cable replacement, remains an important application area. In the past, information transfer between devices such as PCs, laptops, printers, and PDAs has been cumbersome, mainly relying on cables. Today, data communication no availability of uplink links, for example, a mix of wired, radio frequency, and infrared links in the near future.

III.

Application Area of PANs

Six application areas are identified that can be proved important to the future success of PANs. These application areas include body area network, cable replacement, convenience, healthcare, monitoring, and smart things.

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longer needs to depend on cables; short-range wireless technologies can replace cables. Currently, the principal wireless technology used for cable replacement is Bluetooth because of its advantages such as low cost, low power requirement, small size, and widespread deployment in devices. However, new applications have posed new challenges. For example, digital audio/video (AV) requires multi-Gbps rates at a very low bit error rate from the source to the display. In order to cater for these high data rate requirements, wireless technologies such as UWB offer a simple and inexpensive installation with secured connectivity and high transmission rate. Although the concept of cable replacement might create a vision of ubiquitous point-to-point communication, the fact is that wireless devices can only communicate with several other devices that are within range. For example, in a Bluetooth scatter net, a device can be either a master or a slave but not both, and, at most, a Bluetooth device is able to communicate with seven other devices. Convenience: Convenience is a strong driving force in consumer markets. Today, remote control applications on devices such as mobile phones and PDAs must obey communication standards to understand each other and to allow uniform access to peer devices. This leads to the concept of a conventional remote control. A typical example of PAN technologies being used for remote control is a television set. Because of emerging PAN technologies such as Bluetooth, remote control devices no longer require a line-of-sight connection.

Healthcare: One of the most personal application areas for PANs is healthcare. As suggested earlier, body area networks are a particularly appealing solution to provide information about the health status of patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes or asthma. In order to establish a wireless network for a patient, a number of wireless sensors should be located on the human body or in close proximity, such as on clothing. The network provides continuous health monitoring and real-time feedback to the user and medical personnel with the physiological parameters of the patient being transmitted to medical services via a public network to be further analyzed. Furthermore, the measurements can be recorded over a long period of time, which improves the usefulness of the measured data. Monitoring: Monitoring systems and environments using PAN technologies require information communication between mobilized or embedded devices within a short range. There are many applications in which PAN technologies can be used for monitoring. Health monitoring via body area networks has been included above. When personal area networks are linked together into mesh networks, they can be used for environmental monitoring, for example to monitor temperatures and humidity levels in cargo holds of ships. PANs can also be used for security monitoring. The most critical design challenge for PAN-based monitoring systems is the limited power supply. For example, improving energy efficiency extends the overall system lifetime in wireless sensor networks. Furthermore, when high-density sensors send highly redundant report messages simultaneously,

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scheduling a subset of nodes for monitoring service could improve power efficiency. Smart things: In the ubiquitous computing world of the future, ubiquitous computation service will be the main driving force, and the corresponding essential element will be smart things with embedded computers. Smart things are commonly understood as wireless, ad hoc networked, mobile, autonomous, special purpose computing appliances. Smart things could be in a smart environment, smart car, a smart home or any other set of objects as long as they are capable of communicating and responding with some intelligence. The computing world will evolve towards a smart world mainly characterized by ubiquitous intelligence and filled with smart things which encompass three categories: smart object, smart space, and smart system. The future of smart applications is to coordinate smart objects and integrate these isolated smart spaces together into a higher level of environments known as smart hyperspace or hyperenvironments.

However, there are some important differences between WLANs and PANs. WPAN technologies emphasize low cost and low power consumption, usually at the expense of range and peak speed. WLAN technologies emphasize higher peak speed and longer range at the expense of cost and power consumption. WLAN technologies emphasize higher peak speed and longer range at the expense of cost and power consumption. Typically, WLANs provide wireless links from portable laptops to a wired LAN via access points. To date, IEEE 802.11b has gained acceptance rapidly as a WLAN standard. It has a nominal open-space range of 100m and a peak over-the-air speed of 11 Mbps. Users can expect maximum available speeds of about 5.5 Mbps. A problematic topic about the Bluetooth PAN and IEEE 802.11b LAN is the coexistence issue because both operate in the unlicensed ISM band. When operated simultaneously in the same physical space, these two technologies degrade each others performance. Over the long run, researchers anticipate that

IV.

WLANs Versus PANs

the rapid development of WLAN

WLANs will migrate to the 5-GHz unlicensed band, which may eliminate most coexistence issues. In particular, the companion standard IEEE 802.11a, designed for the 5-GHz band, will operate at peak over-the-air speeds up to 54 Mbps over distances up to 50m. Maximum data speeds available to users are projected to be between 24 and 35 Mbps

Regarding

standards during recent years, as well as some of the target WLAN applications, a natural question arises: why is there research into PANs when there is already a well-traced line of progress for WLANs? WLANs can also afford wireless connectivity to the proximate portable computing devices, which is an initial drive for designing PANs.

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issues are open to new solutions and ideas, which we may not even imagine at the moment

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[1] Jeghan Kamoguz,High Rate Personal Area Network, IEEE Communications Dec 2001 [2] Anthony Lo, Weidong Delft Personal Lu, Martin of An

Jacobsson, Venkatesha Prasad and Ignas Niemegeers, v. Conclusion Technology. University Networks:

Overlay Network of Wireless Personal In this paper, WPAN having different standards i.e. IEEE802.15.1 and IEEE 802.15.3 are discussed. And then the application areas that can give rise to the importance of WPAN. High-rate wireless personal area networks support multimedia applications. They establish connectivity among consumer electronics and portable communication devices, These applications require the data rates, which support video distribution, ad hoc connectivity, QoS, low current drain, power management capability and cast efficient [5] R. Shepherd, Bluetooth Wireless Engineering Technology in the Home, Electronics & Communication The PAN introduces the personal space concept into the communication world. It will develop toward the network extension within the personal world [6] Howitt, I., WLAN and WPAN implementing a variety of new features in order to meet the rising service and network demands. The user surrounded by his or her personal smart space could move seamlessly and run various applications through the different network environments. Many Coexistence July 2001. in UL Band, IEEE Trans. Journal,13(5), 2001, implementations. High-rate WPAN IEEE 802.15.3 standard fulfils these requirements. [4] IEEE Communications, OCT.2001 "IEEE 802.1 5.3 Criteria Definitions, IEEE P802.15- 00/110r13, Sept. 2000. [3] Jose A. Gutierrez, Marco Naeve, IEEE 802.15.4 Standard for Low-Power Lowcost Wireless Personal Area Networks, Area Networks and 3G Networks,

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