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Personal Area Network
A personal area network (PAN) is the interconnection of information technology devices within the range of an individual person, typically within a range of 10 meters. Personal area networks may be wired with computer buses such as USB and FireWire.
There is also wireless personal area network (WPAN) which is virtually a synonym since almost any personal area network would need to function wirelessly. Conceptually, the difference between a PAN and a wireless LAN is that the former tends to be centered around one person while the latter is a local area network (LAN) that is connected without wires and serving multiple users.
Very good example of using personal area network is at the moment when you are traveling with a laptop, a personal digital assistant (PDA), and a portable printer, you could interconnect them without having to plug anything in, using some form of wireless technology. Typically, this kind of personal area network could also be interconnected without wires to the Internet or other networks.
PAN Technology
One of the most often used PAN technologies is A Bluetooth PAN is also called a piconet. It is composed of up to 8 active devices in a master-slave relationship (a very large number of devices can be connected in "parked" mode). The first Bluetooth device in the piconet is the master, and all other devices are slaves that communicate with the master. A piconet typically has a range of 10 meters, although ranges of up to 100 meters can be reached under ideal circumstances.
Latest innovations in Bluetooth antennas have allowed these devices to widely exceed the range for which they were originally designed. At DEF CON 12, a group of hackers known as "Flexilis" successfully connected two Bluetooth devices more than half a mile (800 m) away. They used an antenna with a scope and Yagi antenna, all attached to a rifle stock. A cable attached the antenna to a Bluetooth card in a computer. They later named the antenna "The BlueSniper."
Another not so known PAN technology is Skinplex. It transmits via the capacitive near field of human skin. Skinplex can detect and communicate up to one meter from a human body. It is already used for access control for door locks and jamming protection in convertible car roofs.
The WPANs can be also made possible with network technologies such as IrDA, UWB, Z-Wave and ZigBee.
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