From WPANs to Personal Networks: Technologies and Applications

This one-stop resource offers you complete, state-of-the-art coverage of wireless personal area networks, including critical discussions on current standards, important research, and applications in the field. The book gives you a solid overview of Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15, the foundations of WPAN technology, and explains how the Personal Operating Space (POS) concept is ushering in the WPAN revolution. It details how invisibility, automatic connection, service discovery, and security form the POS and how the POS is the universal interface in WPANs.

Prasad (Aalborg University) and Deneire (University of Nice) overview the state of the art of wireless personal area networks (WPANs) which allow people within ten meters to communicate digitally. After detailing the architecture of the two most well- known WPAN technologies, Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15, the authors explain the motivations behind new WPAN approaches and describe the various research activities related to pervasive computing, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), and security. The final section explores the relationship between WPANs and 4G networks, and applications in health care, shopping, mobile gaming, and distributed work cases. Annotation © 2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Ramjee Prasad is director of the Center for TeleInFrastruktur (CTIF), Aalborg University. He is the author of OFDM for Wireless Communications Systems (Artech House, 2004), coauthor of Applied Satellite Navigation Using GPS, GALILEO, and Augmentation Systems, and is the author/coauthor of several other books published by Artech House.

Luc Deneire is a professor at the I3S Laboratory at the University of Nice. He holds an Engineer degree in electronics and telecommunications from the University of Liege and the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, respectively, and a Ph.D. in signal processing and telecommunications from Eurecom.