PAN-to-PAN Communication Between WiMedia-based Distributed Networks

Future personal area networks will move with their owners resulting in several situations, in which independent piconets need to exchange data. This paper presents and analyses a mechanism that enables PAN-to-PAN communication between WiMedia-based distributed networks that operate on different PHY channels. Whereas other PAN standards like IEEE 802.15.3 do not support this type of communication, it has been found that two WiMedia PANs can be merged using the presented mechanism and thus, communication between formerly independent PANs can be established. The presented simulation results prove the concept and show the performance in terms of the required time to merge and PER during the merge process. Further, it has been found that the time to merge does not depend on the number of allocated medium access slots and that the interference created during the merge process is eliminated quickly.