Wireless Home Area Network Technologies

Abstract

One of the visionary concepts that home area network intends to achieve is the establishment of communication between home appliances such as computers, TVs, telephones, refrigerators, air conditioners etc. Wireless home area networks have an edge over their wired counterparts because features of wired networks such as flexibility and interoperability are coupled with those in the wireless domain, namely, simplicity of installation, and mobility. Yet despite this promising prospect, the market is evolving slowly because there are numerous industrial grouping and standardization bodies that continue their work on independent and often non-interoperable specifications for home networks; on the other hand, while there are multiple home PCs and multimedia network-enabled appliances, the majority of the houses can not support sophisticated interconnection, while most consumers are unwilling or cannot afford a large scale home rewiring. Wireless Networks can resolve the rewiring issue capturing, major share of home network market. In this paper, the author reviews the available technologies in the home network area, and provides a comparison of the in-home technologies.