8Conclusions

Wireless network technologies connect without wires our high technology devices to either a high speed network or another device. In the past, wires would have to be placed from room to room or floor to floor, price for setup was costly, and the time to setup a wired network was vastly increased from a wireless network among other things.

Nowadays setting up a wireless network setup is really easy to do, and there are a ton of wireless products to choose from in addition to plenty of resources available to help you with setup and configuration of the wireless network if needed.

Different technologies can be chosen to best suit the application requirement and data transmission range can vary from a few meters to several kilometers. Wireless networks certainly offer new opportunities for industrial solutions, but they must be implemented with special attention to security.

Comparison of wireless networks types

Type of network

Name

Standard

Frequency band

Nominal range

Maximum Bit rate

WPAN

Bluetooth

IEEE 802.15.1

2.4 GHz

10 m

720 Kbps

IrDA

IrDA

Infrared window

850-900 nm wavelength

1 m

16 Mbps

ZigBee

IEEE 802.15.4

868 MHz, 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz

10 m

250 Kbps

UWB

IEEE 802.15.3

3.1-10.6 GHz (USA)

3.4-4.8 GHz & 6-8.5 GHz (Europe)

10 m

480 Mbps

WLAN

Wi-Fi

IEEE 802.11

2.4 / 5 GHz

100 m

1 Mbps

IEEE 802.11a

5 GHz

100 m

48 Mbps

IEEE 802.11b

2.4 GHz

100 m

11 Mbps

IEEE 802.11g

2.4 GHz

100 m

54 Mbps

IEEE 802.11n

2.4 / 5 GHz

250 m

600 Mbps

IEEE 802.11ac

5 GHz

250 m

1.3 Gbps

WMAN

WiMAX

IEEE 802.16

2-11 GHz and

10-66 GHz

50 km

70 Mbps

WWAN

Cellular

AMPS, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA, LTE

700 MHz, 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 1900 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2600 MHz

> 50 km

1 Gbps

Satellite

DVB-S2

3-30 GHz

> 50 km

60 Mbps