© 2017, IJARCSSE All Rights Reserved Page | 628 Volume 7, Issue 5, May 2017 ISSN: 2277 128X International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering Research Paper Available online at: www.ijarcsse.com Understanding Personal Area Networks Matthew N. O. Sadiku, Mahamadou Tembely, and Sarhan M. Musa Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446, United States DOI: 10.23956/ijarcsse/SV7I5/0207 Abstract— A personal area network (PAN) connects IT devices or gadgets (such as cell phones, PCs, laptop computers, PDAs, printers, pagers, or other wearable computer devices) within the environment of an individual user. Because PAN enables low-power, low-rate communications between the devices near the user, it has received a lot of attention in the recent years. This paper provides a brief introduction to PAN. Keywords— home area networks, smart homes, smart grid I. INTRODUCTION As electronic devices become smaller, low power, and low cost, we have begun to adorn our bodies with wearable computer devices such cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), palmtops, pocket video games, wrist- watch, pagers, digital camera, and GPS receiver. As our homes continue to contain an increasing number of them, there is a growing demand for networking them together in a manageable fashion [1]. The concept of personal area networks (PANs) has arisen as a means of enabling these devices to share data. A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network that handles interconnection of digital devices at the surrounding of a single user. It involves battery-operated, wearable and portable digital devices that draw very little current and are located within 1 m to 100 m of each other. It allows these devices to communicate with each other. PAN is for personal use only. The reach of a PAN is typically few meters. Every device in a PAN can plug into any other device provided they are in close proximity. A PAN may be either wired or wireless. It is wired when it is carried over wired computer buses such as USB and FireWire . Wireless PAN or WPAN is based on the standard IEEE 802.15 and employs wireless technologies such as infrared, ZigBee, Bluetooth, and ultrawideband. WPAN allows devices such as keyboards, audio head sets, and printers to connect to personal digital assistants , cell phones , or computers wirelessly [2]. It allows connection to the Internet. The concept of personal area network originated at M.I.T.'s Media Lab. PAN is different from a LAN in a sense that it requires little or no infrastructure. The range coverage of PANs is smaller than that of LANs. An example of a WPAN is shown in Figure 1 [3]. II. PAN TECHNOLOGIES We now examine three of the most popular PAN technologies: ZigBee, Bluetooth and ultrawideband [4]:  ZigBee is a short-range, low-power computer networking protocol that complies with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. It is less complex and expensive than Bluetooth. Bluetooth devices are classified into one of three "Classes", with the power classes having signal ranges of approximately 100m, 10m, and 1m.  Bluetooth is a networking technology for low-cost, short-range radio links. It operates in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band, which is shared with other wireless standards. It was named after King Harald Bluetooth, ruler of Denmark and Norway in the late 10th century. Bluetooth WPAN is often referred to as Pico nets, which are ad hoc networks.  Ultrawideband (UWB) is a radio technology useful for short-range, high-bandwidth communications. It is also known as WiMedia. It operates by spreading pulses across a very wide frequency spectrum (3.1 to 10.6 GHz), approved by FCC. Bluetooth is the most widely-accepted of these technologies. ZigBee does not provide a data rate high enough for some applications. WPAN standard uses the industrial, scientific, and medical frequency bands at 2.45 GHz, 915 MHz in the United States and 868 MHz in Europe. III. APPLICATIONS PANs are emerging technologies for short-range communications. PAN is designed to be an enabler technology. It can be used in computer, industrial, and many control systems [5]. A popular application area of PAN is in medicine. A number of wearable medical sensors could communicate using PAN. PAN can be used in telemedical environment and also in intelligent control of medication delivery using wireless sensing [6]. PAN can serve as aids for disabled individuals. WPAN has been adopted in wireless sensing networks, where battery life is at a premium. Other applications of PAN include RFID and mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs).