Communicating personal gadgets [PAN real-time streaming media protocol]

This paper focuses on communication in personal area networks. A personal area network (PAN) is characterized as an informal collection, or community, of connected small, lightweight, and resource-lean devices, or gadgets. Two basic concepts are visible in the development of PANs, the distributed and the centralized concept. This paper briefly introduces a realtime streaming media protocol that is suitable for both concepts. The protocol can deal with several types of traffic: real-time or non-real-time, bursty or isochronous, high or low bitrate. The protocol is undemanding in terms of resources, so even simple devices can participate in the network. The network is simulated and a prototype is realized.