Chapter 4

Wireless Personal Area

Networks
 Learning objectives
To understand the main physical, architectural and
networking issues of WPAN.
To know about the design considerations of WPAN.
To study the MAC and routing protocols of WPANs.
To know about the WPAN technologies.
To illustrate the applications of WPANs.
 Wireless Personal Area Network
(WPAN)
A personal, short distance area wireless network for
interconnecting devices centered around an individual
person's workspace.
Address wireless networking of mobile computing
devices such as PCs, PDAs, peripherals, cell phones,
pagers and consumer electronics.
Are also called short wireless distance networks.
Extends to 33 feet (10 meters) or less.
Major technologies of WPAN are Bluetooth
(802.15.1), and ZigBee (802.15.4)
 Network architecture
Consists of the Master-Slave configuration.
 WPAN topologies
Two connectivity topologies are defined in
WPAN.
Piconet
scatternet.
 Piconet
A piconet is a WPAN formed by a device serving as a
master and one or more devices serving as slaves in
the network.
Piconet Master/Slave configuration.
 Scatternet
A scatternet is a collection of operational piconets
overlapping in time and space.
A device that is a member of two or more piconets is
said to be involved in a scatternet.
 WPAN components
WPAN components are in a range from very low
power devices with very low communication
possibilities to high-end devices covering the full
range of communication standards.
Requirements
The devices in a WPAN must be low cost.
The devices must operate for a long time from simple
battery.
Because of their large number, they must be small such that
the user is hardly aware of their presence.
The devices are small in size.
Ease of use.
 WPAN technologies
The IEEE 802.15 is the IEEE working group
established in January 1999 to develop standards for
WPAN.
 Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1)
Protocol stack
 Physical layer
The Baseband is the physical layer of the Bluetooth.
When the data is received, baseband checks for
accuracy and extract the information from the packet.
It compresses the data, packetizes using identifiers
and error correction information.
The received packet is checked for errors and
decompressed.
 Physical layer (Contd..)
The Bluetooth standard supports two types of link:
synchronous connection oriented links (SCO)
asynchronous connectionless links (ACL)
SCO is used primarily for voice communications and
ACL is used for packet data. 13 different packet types
are defined for the baseband layer of the Bluetooth
system.
Physical layer specifications of
802.15
 Link layer
Link management (LM) is the fourth layer of
Bluetooth specification.
Each Bluetooth device has it own link manager.
It is responsible for the following functions:
To send and receive data and it is able to identify the
sending device and perform authentication and ciphering
functions.
It will determine what type of frame to use on a slot-by-slot
basis.
It directs how devices will listen for transmissions from
other devices or put devices into various power-save modes
according to the Bluetooth-specified procedures.
 Application software
The last basic part of Bluetooth system is application
software.
The application software is set in the device that
operates an application over the Bluetooth protocol
stack.
This software allows the mobile phone, PDA or
keyboard to do its job.
In order to interoperate with each Bluetooth devices,
all of them must have compatible sections in their
Bluetooth stack.
 IEEE 802.15.2 (Coexistence)
Concerned with coexistence issues that arise
when two wireless systems share an
environment of operation.
It has two goals:
to quantify the effects of mutual interference between
WPAN and WLAN devices, and
to establish mechanisms for coexistence of WPAN and
WLAN (e.g. IEEE 802.15.1 and IEEE 802.11b) at both the
MAC and PHY layer.
 IEEE 802.15.2 (Contd..)
Mechanisms can be broadly categorized as
collaborative or non-collaborative.
A collaborative mechanism that facilitates
coexistence needs to have coordinated scheduling
efforts, such as TDMA or CSMA.
Adaptive frequency hopping, MAC scheduling,
and transmit power control schemes are non-
collaborative mechanisms for coexistence.
 HR-WPAN (IEEE 802.15.3)
IEEE 802.15.3 is a standard for high-rate (11 to 55
Mb/s) WPANs.
HR-WPAN mainly focus on power management, QoS
and security.
The main purpose of IEEE 802.15.3 is to provide low
cost, low complexity, low power consumption, and
high data rate connectivity for wireless personal
devices.
It is designed to support at least 11 Mbps data rate
within at least 10 meters range.
The vision of HR-WPAN is to promote wireless
multimedia connectivity and interoperability between
devices in a personal area network.
IEEE 802.15.3 Channels
Reference model-IEEE 802.15.3
 LR-WPAN (IEEE 802.15.4):
ZigBee
investigates low data rate WPAN solutions with a
battery life ranging from months to several years and
a very low complexity.
the spectrum allocation for this standard is as follows:
1 channel at 868 MHz, 10 channels in the 915 MHz
band, and 16 channels in the 2.4 GHz band.
Topology models
ZigBee stack
 ZigBee stack (Contd..)
Physical layer: The physical layer defines radio
characteristics and supports the 2.45GHz and
868/915MHz radio bands.
MAC layer uses CSMA-CA (carrier sense multiple
access with collision avoidance) channel access
mechanism.
Network layer performs tasks include starting the
network (coordinator), assigning network addresses,
adding and removing network devices, routing
messages, applying security, and implementing route
discovery.
Application layer consists of the Application
Framework, ZigBee Device Object (ZDO), and
Application Support (APS) Sublayer.
 IEEE 802.15.5: Mesh WPAN
A mesh WPAN employs one of two connection
arrangements, full mesh topology or partial mesh
topology Mesh networks have the capability to
provide extension of network coverage
without increasing transmit power or receive
sensitivity, enhanced reliability via route redundancy,
easier network configuration and better device battery
life due to fewer retransmissions.
 WPAN applications
Automotive
The use of a WPAN is most suitable for vehicles as the
distances between devices within the vehicles will be
limited to an acceptable range and the use of cables to
connect devices are cumbersome. For this reason the
WPAN can be used.
Information sharing
The use of IEEE 802.15 devices has been developed for
workplace use with le sharing, printing, and multimedia
communications.
Home automation
The interconnectivity within the home with an increase in
digitally based devices will see data transfer much more
prominent. Currently using infrared communications,
owners of personal digital assistants can download software
to use the device as a remote control. In such application
scenarios the WPAN technology is the most suitable one.
 WPAN applications (Contd..)
Health monitoring
With many advantages including low-power consumption,
small size, simple protocol, wide compatibility, and so on,
WPAN is applied to many medical applications including
telemedicine system, pervasive and continuous patients
monitoring and wireless-integrated medical devices.
Office automation
Notebook, printer, PDA, desktop computer, fax machine,
mouse, keyboard - all can be instantly connected via
Bluetooth technology. Stay completely up-to-date, at any
where and any time.
RFID applications
Some of the RFID applications, using WPAN technologies
finds the applications like asset tracking, people tracking,
inventory tracking, etc.