Mahavir Education Trust's

Shah & Anchor Kutchhi Engineering College,

Chembur, Mumbai 400 088
UG Programme in Electronics Engineering
Experiment 1

AIM: To compare WLAN and WPAN protocols (802.11 & 802.15.4)

Theory:

IEEE 802.11(WLAN):

Wireless Local Area Network i.e. WLANs are flexible data communication systems that can be
used for applications in which mobility is required. In the indoor business environment, although
mobility is not an absolute requirement, WLANs provide more flexibility than that achieved by
the wired LAN. WLANs are designed to operate in industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio
bands (see Table 21.1) and unlicensed-national information infrastructure (U-NII) bands.
Currently, WLANs can provide data rates up to 11 Mbps, but the industry is making a move
toward high-speed WLANs. Manufacturers are developing WLANs to provide data rates up to
54 Mbps or higher. The IEEE802.11 committee is responsible for WLAN standards. WLANs
include IEEE 802.11a (Wi-Fi 5), IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.11g and IEEE 802.11n.

In WLANs, the connection between the client and the user is accomplished by the use of a
wireless medium such as RF or Infrared (IR) communications instead of a cable. This allows a
remote user to stay connected to the network while mobile or not physically attached to the
network. The wireless connection is usually accomplished by the user having a hand-held
terminal or laptop that has an RF interface card installed inside the terminal or through the PC
card slot of the laptop. The client connection from the wired LAN to the user is made through an
access point (AP)\that can support multiple users simultaneously. The AP can reside at any node
on the wired network and acts as a gateway for wireless users’ data to be routed onto the wired
network.

WLANs can be built with either of the following topologies Peer-to-peer (ad hoc) topology,
Access point-based topology, Point-to-multipoint bridge topology. The architecture of the IEEE
802.11 WLAN is designed to support a network where most decision making is distributed to
mobile stations. This type of architecture has several advantages. It is tolerated of faults in all of
the WLAN equipment and eliminates possible bottlenecks a centralized architecture would
introduce. IEEE 802.11 supports three basic topologies of WLANs: the independent basic
service set (IBSS), the basic service set, and the extended service set (ESS).

An IBSS configuration in analogous to peer-to-peer office network in which no single node is

required to act as a server. IBSS WLANs includes a number of nodes or wireless stations that
communicate directly with one another on an ad hoc, peer-to-peer basis. Generally, IBSS
implementations cover a limited area and are not connected to any large network. The basic

Advanced Networking Technology Page 1

 Mahavir Education Trust's
Shah & Anchor Kutchhi Engineering College,
Chembur, Mumbai 400 088
UG Programme in Electronics Engineering
service set configuration relies on an AP that acts as the logical server for a single WLAN cell or
channel.

IEEE 802.15.4(WPAN):

The low rate (LR) wireless personal access network (WPAN) (IEEE 802.15.4/LRWPAN) is
intended to serve a set of industrial, residential and medical applications with very low power
consumption, low cost requirement, and relaxed need of data rate. The low data rate enables the
LR-WPAN to consume little power. ZigBee technology is a low data rate, low power
consumption, low cost, wireless networking protocol targeted towards automation and remote
control applications. The IEEE 802.15.4 committee and ZigBee Alliance worked together and
developed the technology commercially known as ZigBee. It is expected to provide low-cost and
low-power connectivity for devices that need battery life as long as several months to several
years but does not require data rates as high as those enabled by Bluetooth. ZigBee can be
implemented in mesh (peer-to-peer) networks larger than is possible with Bluetooth. ZigBee-
complaint wireless devices are expected to transmit 10-75 minutes, depending on the RF
environment and power output consumption required for a given application, and operate in the
unlicensed RF worldwide (2.4 GHz global, 915 MHz America, or 868 MHz Europe) bands. The
data rate is 250 kbps at 2.4 GHz, 40kbps at 915 MHz and 20 kbps at 868 MHz.

ZigBee supports three types of topologies: star topology, peer-to-peer topology and cluster tree.
In the star topology,, communication is established between devices and a single central
controller called the PAN coordinator. In the peer-to-peer topology, there is also one PAN
coordinator. In contrast to star topology, any device can communicate with any other device as
long as they are in range of one another. A peer-to-peer network can be ad hoc, self-organizing,
and self-healing. The cluster-tree topology is a special case of a peer-to-peer network in which
most devices are full-function devices and an RFD may connect to a cluster-tree network as a
leaf node at the end of a branch.

IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN Device Architecture

Following figure shows an LR-WPAN device. The device comprises a physical layer (PHY),
which contains the RF transreceiver along with its low-level control mechanism. A MAC
sublayer provides access to the physical channel for all types of transfer. The upper layers
consists of a network layer, which provides the intended function of a device. An IEEE 802.2
logical link control (LLC) can access the MAC through the service specific convergence
sublayer (SSCS).

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 Mahavir Education Trust's
Shah & Anchor Kutchhi Engineering College,
Chembur, Mumbai 400 088
UG Programme in Electronics Engineering

LLC- Logical Link Layer

MAC- Media Access Control

SSCS- Service Specific Convergence Sublayer

Comparision Table:

Interval 802.15.4 delay 802.11 delay 802.15.4 PDR 802.15.4 PDR

1 0.122274 1.42355 5.21077 99.94
3 0.146457 1.42384 5.32424 99.9495
5 0.14448 1.42376 8.9227 99.9873
7 0.198814 1.42387 8.52727 100
9 0.117957 1.42382 9.13778 100

Advanced Networking Technology Page 3

 Mahavir Education Trust's
Shah & Anchor Kutchhi Engineering College,
Chembur, Mumbai 400 088
UG Programme in Electronics Engineering
Type Coverage Performance Standards Applications
WPAN Within reach of a Moderate Wireless PAN Cable
person Within reach of a replacement for
person peripherals
Moderate
Bluetooth, IEEE
802.15, and
IrDA Cable
replacement for
peripherals
WLAN Within a building High IEEE 802.11, Mobile extension
or campus Wi-Fi, and of wired
HiperLAN networks

CONCLUSION:

It is observed that Wireless Local Area Networks are more efficient and beneficial than Wireless
Personal Area Networks. WLAN gives faster access covering a larger area as compared to
WPAN. WPAN is limited only for personal use.

Advanced Networking Technology Page 4