A personal area network (PAN) is the backbone of a personal computer and electronics device network that encompasses a personal workspace. A wide-area network (WAN) is a wireless telecommunication wide area network that is designed to allow for long-range communication among connected devices. A wireless PAN (WPAN) is just a PAN that uses wireless data connections to the myriad of potential personal electronic devices (PEDs) or other wirelessly connected devices, such as sensors, actuators, security monitors, etc.
There are a variety of directional and omni directional RF Antennas that are designed to work with these types of wireless networks. For example, the FM51OM1035 omni antenna operates in the 698-960 MHz band and can be used for PtMP applications and provides 8 dBi of gain. The FMANLP1006 Log Periodic directional antenna covers multiple bands ranging from 790 MHz up to 2.7 GHz and offers strong gain of 11 dBi.
A Low-power WPAN (LoWPAN) is a combination of a wireless communication protocol and wireless hardware that is able to operate in a mode that conserves power in transmission (TX) and/or reception (RX) and in between transmission/reception (TRX) events. Similarly, a low-power WAN (LPWAN) is a technology that supports the low-power connection of devices in a WAN as opposed to PANs or local area networks (LANs). A WAN is a network of devices that are spread over a wide area, as opposed to a local area (LAN), or a personal area (PAN).
A LoWPAN is commonly employed to support a small locality of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices that may or may not end up communicating data over the internet but may still use some type of IP protocol. The goal of a LoWPAN is to provide wireless connection to devices that are otherwise power constrained. This may mean that the device itself is battery powered, powered by renewable energies, or faces some other restriction to the TX power from the gateway or the device itself.
List of LPWAN and LoWPAN Wireless Standards
- IEEE 802.15 based standards
- Zigbee
- Bluetooth
- LoRa
- Wireless USB
- ANT
- WirelessHART
- ISA100.11a
- Thread
- Sigfox
- Z-Wave
- Weightless
- NB-Fi Protocol
- LTE-M
- MySensors
- Narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT)
- Wize
There are a variety of standards that support LoWPAN, the most common of which are likely IEEE 802.15.4 based standards, such as Zigbee and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). IEEE 802.15.4 standards can be used in the 868 MHz (Europe), 915 MHz (United States), and 2.4 GHz (Worldwide). In general, wireless devices are less efficient when operating higher frequency radios for TX and RX, so the lower frequency bands are often preferred for extreme low-power applications. However, higher bandwidth, and hence, higher data rates are often available when operating in higher frequency bands. For instance, the data rates for 868 MHz (2 MHz bandwidth), 915 MHz (2 MHz bandwidth), and 2.450 GHz (5 MHz bandwidth) IEEE 802.15.4 are 20 kb/s, 40 kb/s, and 250 kb/s, respectively. However, devices operating in the 2.450 GHz band tend to require additional power per bit communicated, and also have lower range than lower frequency band devices for the same power output.
Learn about Fairview’s selection of LoWPAN and LPWAN antennas