Respond to the following four discussions with at least 100 words.

Student one:

Wireless personal area network (WPAN) are a good network to use if you looking to support a small are (30 meters) and don’t want to deal with the physical pesky wires and cables(p.162). So, one thing the book listed is smart homes. I see this definitely growing within WPANs as more and more consumers are upgrading their home technology. Your whole home can be integrated now from doorbell security, home security system, sprinkler system, thermostat controls, your refrigerator…I probably missed a few. With the growing number of devices you can use on a WPAN would the network size need to grow as well to support them?

There are two lower protocol standards used by WPANs Bluetooth and Zigbee. Bluetooth uses the IEEE standard 802.15.1 and Zigbee uses 802.15.4. Most wireless capabilities are now built into the device itself instead of using an external usb device. Bluetooth data rates depends on which version your device is capable of ranging from version 1.1-1.2 at 723kbps to version 4 at 24mbps.

Zigbee standard’s focus is on stationary devices and only true global standard to perform with low data rates ranging within 20-150kbps, little power and connect 30-150ft (p.174). Zigbee Allegiance uses a different variety of devices such as window shades, gas detectors, patient monitoring ect…Its devices differ from as they do not typically need to communicate for long periods. Although designed for short range/short term communication they can be operable in full mesh scheme.

IRda uses infrared. Because is requires devices to be within sight the Bluetooth technologies are replacing it since radio waves can overcome. However, where radiowave technology can’t be used IRDa is used. So, what one lack another technology can make up for. That’s the beauty of technology, right?

Reference

Olenewa, J. L. (2017). Guide to wireless communications. Australia: Cengage Learning.

http://www.irda.org/

-Beth

Student two:

a WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) are a variety of different short range communications between multiple devices. Two of the WPAN technologies are Bluetooth and ZigBee and they both have different purposes and work in different ways but both are a means to eliminate the need for a physical medium in a fairly low data transfer communication. Bluetooth uses the 2.4 GHz to send communications while frequency hopping in order to reduce interference with other devices allowing it to be a fairly reliable method of communication. The standard set for Bluetooth is 802.15.1 set by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ZigBee like Bluetooth uses a low band RF signal but for the American region it uses 902-928 MHz, 868-868.6 in Europe, and 2.4-2.4835 GHz worldwide. By using DSSS (direct-sequence spread spectrum) ZigBee is able to reduce the amount of interference even when having multiple devices in close proximity. In both the American and European regions BPSK (Binary phase-shift keying) is used to modulate the signal while the 2.4 GHz signal is modulated using OQPSK (offset quadrature phase-shift keying). The primary benefit of ZigBee over Bluetooth is that while it does have a much lower data transfer rate it is much more reliable as a long term investment, ZigBee communications were made with the intention of being a reliable source of short range communications while laying dormant for an extended period of time, this principle has also led to it as having a much lower power consumption over Bluetooth which requires a constant connection to maintain the communications. IrDA is a vastly different technology when comparing it to Bluetooth and ZigBee as it doesn’t use radio frequency signals to communication instead opting for the use of infrared technology. This is a point and shoot technology that requires direct line of sight between the devices. The primary benefit to the use of IrDA is that it is a very physically secure method of communication and it has a very low BER (bit error rate).

Thank you,

-Matt

Student three:

Hi everyone,

Chapter 6 covers the High-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks, IEEE 802.15.3 series if you will. The original standards were dropped due to lack of agreement in standards. Later 802.15.3b was developed along with 802.15.5 and 802.15.3c for wireless HD and mesh networking. Some examples of high-rate WPAN use would include wireless headphones, digital cameras or phones connecting to printers wirelessly, or even linking smartphones/tablets to smart TVs or projectors.

IEEE 802.15.3c (WirelessHD Consortium) enables the use high definition audio and visual to be transmitted from one device to another without wires, which is very different than Zigbee devices that transmit very simple commands. It can also stream multiple streams at once. In the MAC layer, stationary devices (such as TVs) become a base of operations of sorts for a wireless video area network (WVAN). Our text book states that with the 802.15.3c standards there are two types of piconets: child and neighbor. My understanding is that the neighbor piconet is used when there are no more frequencies used, but I do not understand how the child piconet works entirely at the moment. If anyone is willing to expand more on this part, I would be very grateful.

The IEEE 802.15.5 standard is used for mesh networks. This is when one wireless device establishes a connection to all other wireless devices within the radio frequency range. This standard is also part of other standards to help with the interoperability of device usage.

As with all technology, the usage of devices with these standards will have some weaknesses. Some of these weaknesses are exploited by the use of cyberattacks such as Denial-of-service (DoS) that floods the devices resources. Other opportunities can leave the transmission packets vulnerable and captured. Afterwards, it would be tweaked and sent out to infect the system and allowing an intruder take control.

Thank you for reading my post, and please feel free to add or correct any information.

Reference

Olenewa, J. Guide to Wireless Communications. [VitalSource Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/97812857002…

-Andres

Student four:

After reading chapter 6 about high rate WPAN, again I was a little confused. I wish I had whatever class or training which would make this information easier to understand, but I try my best. LOL. HR WPANs, are capable of transferring data at speeds ranging from 1 to 28 Gbps. (Olenewa, 2017, pg. 202). Some of the applications which use this technology would be digital cameras connecting to printers and kiosks, laptops connecting to multimedia projectors, and distributing video signals from a cable, satellite, or IP over phone line receivers to television sets throughout the house. These are just a few examples of how the technology would be used. The IEEE discontinued work on the original standard 802.15.3 due to lack of agreement on which modulation and coding system to use (Olenewa, 2017, pg. 202), but amendments have been made and it appears work is still ongoing to complete a standard. While reading, I understood HR WPAN, is the ability for a device to stream video and audio without having to decompress the information. This improve the video and audio quality.

My understanding is 5G would fall under HR WPAN. I could be wrong but there seemed to be a lot of talk about cell phones and 5G capabilities earlier this year, but I have noticed a big drop off in chatter about this. While I haven’t dug into the topic, I wonder if the lack of agreement is the reason for the slow down? On the other hand, I have seen some interesting applications which I think utilize this technology.

People have the ability to watch a program on their smartphone and if they swipe up towards a “smart” television, the program on their phone is now on the television. This is amazing, at least to me, and I don’t fully understand how it is accomplished.

References:

Olenewa, J. L. (2017). Guide to wireless communications. Australia: Cengage Learning.

-Shaun