Comparative performance analysis of short-range wireless protocols for wireless personal area network

Abstract

A wide area of a personal network is discuses thoroughly. Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) can be categorized into four parts: Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, and Ultra Wide Band (UWB). Bluetooth and ZigBee wireless technologies are a specification for short-range, low-cost, and small form factor that enables user-friendly connectivity among portable and handheld personal devices, and provide connectivity of these devices to the Internet. It is found from the literature, that ZigBee and Bluetooth are used for short-range while Wi-Fi and UWB have some large-range as compared to Bluetooth and ZigBee. A comparison of short-range wireless technologies is presented. Different parameters, i.e., data coding efficiency, transmission time, transmission range and frequency, power consumption, and the bit error rate of WPAN are plotted and discussed. Some short-range characteristics are also discussed with future aspects.

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Vol.:(0123456789)
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Iran Journal of Computer Science
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42044-021-00087-1
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Comparative performance analysis ofshort‑range wireless protocols
forwireless personal area network
RehmanMubashar1· MuhammadAbuBakarSiddique2 · AteeqUrRehman3· AdeelAsad4· AsadRasool5
Received: 16 December 2020 / Accepted: 24 March 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Abstract
A wide area of a personal network is discuses thoroughly. Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) can be categorized
into four parts: Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, and Ultra Wide Band (UWB). Bluetooth and ZigBee wireless technologies are
a specification for short-range, low-cost, and small form factor that enables user-friendly connectivity among portable and
handheld personal devices, and provide connectivity of these devices to the Internet. It is found from the literature, that
ZigBee and Bluetooth are used for short-range while Wi-Fi and UWB have some large-range as compared to Bluetooth and
ZigBee. A comparison of short-range wireless technologies is presented. Different parameters, i.e., data coding efficiency,
transmission time, transmission range and frequency, power consumption, and the bit error rate of WPAN are plotted and
discussed. Some short-range characteristics are also discussed with future aspects.
Keywords ZigBee· Bluetooth· WPAN· UWB· Wi-Fi
1 Introduction
As wireless power transmission is recently the most
emerging research area and researchers are working hard
to make it more and more efficient. In this modern and
digitally-equipped era, wireless technologies play an impor-
tant and vibrant role in low power electronics and energy-
efficient latest technological devices such as mobile phones,
laptops, etc. Also, networking is in common use and every-
one is being facilitated and it can be seen in different forms,
i.e., digital cameras to cell phones to laptops to printers
too, etc. Wireless personal area network (WPAN) consists
of computers and telecommunication devices with a short-
range up to 100m having no cable and wired connections
[1].
In wireless communication, with the help of some new
tools of communications, we connect the devices to facili-
tate fast and reliable communication. The demand for a high
data rate, with long-range and small power consumption (1
mW up to 100 mW) is increasing day by day. As 90% of
the devices are used indoors, they require more bandwidth,
a low latency rate, higher spectral efficiency, and a smooth
maximum throughput. Furthermore, as the number of users
are increasing, so it becomes a challenge for the researchers
to develop a fast and reliable wireless communication sys-
tem with these properties. Table1 illustrates abbreviations
utilized in the paper.
* Muhammad Abu Bakar Siddique
abu.bkr01110@gmail.com
Rehman Mubashar
eng.rehmanm@gmail.com
Ateeq Ur Rehman
ateeq.rehman@gcu.edu.pk
Adeel Asad
adeelchaudhary321@gmail.com
Asad Rasool
asadrasool.cpecc@gmail.com
1 Department ofElectrical Engineering, Government College
University, Lahore, Pakistan
2 College ofNew Energy, China University ofPetroleum,
Qingdao, China
3 Department ofElectrical Engineering, Government College,
University, Lahore, Pakistan
4 School ofAutomation andControl Science, China University
ofPetroleum, Qingdao, China
5 Department ofElectrical Engineering, Superior University,
Lahore, Pakistan

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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1.1 Wireless networks
A simple wireless communication system consists of two
or more devices using some tools with radio transmitters
and receivers. Figure1 shows a simple wireless network
that can be divided into four parts:
1. Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs),
2. Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs),
3. Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs),
4. Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs).
Wireless wide-area networks are used in wide-area cover-
age and they can be further divided into two parts: cellular
networks and satellite networks.
In cellular, we use GSM protocol based on frequency
division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple
access (TDMA), and code division multiple access (CDMA)
techniques while, in satellite we choose globe-star and GPS
protocols. WMANs use IEEE 802.16 WiMAX standard and
can be implemented in a small area compared to WWAN.
WLANs can be a candidate for some small local areas like
the shopping mall, hospitals, and universities, etc.
1.1.1 Wireless personal area networks
WPAN is a low-powered network with a medium data rate of
up to 100 kbps. IEEE 802.15 protocol is used in Bluetooth,
IrDA, and ZigBee. Scientists of EDINBURG University
developed visible light communication called LI-FI tech-
nology, by using IEEE 802.157.7 standards in PAN. They
transmitted the data with the help of an LED and described
it in an "ON" "OFF" state, i.e., in ON condition, data are
transmitted while in OFF condition no data or null data are
transmitted. ON state is denoted by 1 and OFF state by 0.
This technology gives a data rate of up to 160 Mbps and
allows different users to connect with each other in a suit-
able environment.
Chong etal. [2] presented a low rate and high power
application of WPAN. Their work is about the design of
an Ultra Wide Band (UWB) system optimized for low cost,
low complexity, low power, and low rate WPAN application.
Chillara etal. [3] presented a phase lock loop (PLL) based
analysis for Bluetooth smart and ZigBee. In their work,
they used 860µW with the frequency range from 2.1 to
2.7GHz using an all-digital PLL (ADPLL) based frequency
modulator for WPAN Bluetooth and ZigBee applications,
which is suitable for low power that breaks the 1 mW bar-
rier compared to ADPLLs. Karnfelt etal. [4] demonstrated
Table 1 Abbreviations utilized in the paper
Full-form Abbreviation
Pulse width modulation PWM
Binary phase-shift keying BPSK
Extended service set ESS
Differential code shift keying DCSK
Chaotic ON–OFF keying COOK
All digital phase lock loop ADPLL
Power meter with Wi-Fi communication module PMWCM
Long-term evolution LTE
Low data rate wireless personal area network LR-WPAN
Bandwidth B.W
Ultra-wideband UWB
Frequency division multiple excesses FDMA
Global system for mobile communications GSM
Wireless personal area networks WPANs
Wireless local area networks WLANs
Wireless wide-area networks
Reduced functional device
Fully functional device
Carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance
received signal strength indicator
WWANs
RFD
FFD
CSMA-CA
RSSI
Throughput rate TR
Pulse phase modulation PPM
Basic service set
Independent basic service set
Extended service set
BSS
IBSS
ESS
Quadrature phase-shift keying QPSK
Distribution system DS
Phase lock loop PLL
Bluetooth low energy BLE
Audio modem riser AMR
Quality of service QoS
Gigahertz GHz
Media access control MAC
Visible light control VLC
Time-division multiple excesses TDMA
Infrared data association IrDa
Wireless metropolitan area networks WMANs
Wireless sensor networks WSNs
Wireless power transfer WPT
Fast Fourier transform FFT
Fig. 1 A wireless network

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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a high gain microstrip array antenna using the same sub-
strate that can be integrated with an 18dB amplifier. This
design helps to achieve mechanical stability and helps to
avoid unnecessary transitions by performing measurements
on both amplifier and an antenna [5]. Klemm etal. [6] pro-
posed a small-sized directional antenna design for wireless
personal area network applications. To achieve a reasonable
gain above 10dB with a large band with (B.W) 3.5–7GHz,
they utilized a patch antenna design with small reflecting and
radiation parameters. Its design was efficient and harmless to
the human body in terms of radiation. For wireless personal
area network applications, by applying the eight data path
pipeline approach, Tang etal. [7, 8] presented a fast Fourier
transform (FFT) processor to get a high throughput rate.
The results presented in [7] present a good agreement for
WPAN applications. Weily etal. [9] proposed a circularly
polarized slot array that was suitable for WPAN application
used in millimeter-wave. The results demonstrated in [9]
justify the validity of their proposed work that were valid
for gain B.W, axial ratio, and wide impedance. An indexed-
scaling pipelined fast Fourier transform processor has been
proposed by Chen etal. [10] for wideband orthogonal fre-
quency division multiplexing (W-OFDM) applications of
WPAN applications. Using this structure, low hardware cost
and high throughput can be achieved [11]. A new modula-
tion scheme was developed by Zheng etal. [12] for UWB
applications. They proposed a high-rate transceiver based on
carrier less impulse radio with low power and suitable for
low-band transceiver.
1.1.2 Bluetooth
A short-range wireless communications technology pro-
posed to change the cables connecting for both fixed and
portable devices to maintain a good security level. The
key features of Bluetooth technology have many features
in terms of low cost, low power, and it specifies a smooth
and uniform structure to communicate in a wide range of
devices. The Bluetooth wireless technology is a specification
for short-range, low-cost, and small size that enables user-
friendly connectivity among portable and handheld personal
devices, and provides connectivity of these devices to the
Internet. The technology supports both asynchronous data
flows and synchronous audio streams over links with a raw
link speed of 1 Mbs.
Neelakanta etal. [13] suggested ways to mitigate the
interference problem among ZigBee and Bluetooth when
used in factory communication. According to the authors,
when these two protocols are deployed in a factory locale
then although they have distinct modulation schemes, there
would be interference due to the same ISM band [14]. An
overview is presented by Bisidkian etal. [15] for Bluetooth
technologies. Bluetooth is a wireless technology that is
easily accessible to everyone at a very cheap price but it
works on a very small distance. Its operating frequency is
2.4GHz using the ISM band for low transmit power radios.
Bluetooth technology is portable, easy to use, and also gives
a connection to various internet devices. This provides both
types of data flowing for synchronous and asynchronous to
audio streams over the link with the raw link at a speed of
1 Mbs. Lee etal. [16] provided the basic idea about the
four famous wireless technologies, i.e., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi,
ZigBee, and UWB. It also contains the information about
the quantitative evaluation in terms of the time required for
them in transmitting the data, data coding efficiency, the
complexity of the protocols, and power consumption by this
technology [17]. In the current article, the authors did not
draw any conclusion about the superiority of any technol-
ogy because the suitability of the practical applications is
influenced by network protocols which also include various
factors like reliability capability, low prices, and different
factors to be considered in the future.
In [18], the authors proposed the three types of poten-
tial exposure in the Bluetooth technology version 1.0 B. It
explained the exposure of the system to an attack in which
an adversary initiates an attack in some circumstances to find
the key exchanged by two affected devices.
1.1.3 ZigBee
This protocol is usually used for devices that consume less
power. ZigBee is for a low-rate wireless personal area net-
work and its personal operating space is about 10–20m. This
protocol can cater to multi-hop mesh networking which has
the self-organizing capability. In a low-rate wireless personal
area network such as ZigBee, two device types participate in
it, one is the fully functional device (FFD) and the other is
a reduced functional device (RFD). The FFD can commu-
nicate with RFD as well as FFD while RFD can only com-
municate with FFD. An RFD can be deployed with fewer
resources and memory because it is used in very simple
applications.
Lee etal. [19] have deliberated upon various ZigBee fea-
tures and found that it has a good performance in the non-
beacon mode. However, some factors degrade its throughput
which includes protocol overhead and increased probability
of collision among contending nodes of carrier-sense mul-
tiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA-CA). They
suggested that interference issues should be investigated as
a future study [20]. The intricacy of wireless sensor net-
works was realistically examined by Lee etal. [21]. For
this, the authors designed a ZigBee platform and an autono-
mous wireless communication was established via the ITRI
ZBnode. The practicability of the provided platform was
established by forming a mesh and tree network and it was
found that the proposed design had less power consumption,

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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data rate, and cost. Chellappa etal. [22] presented a detailed
study of ZigBee wireless standards and explained the com-
plete standard specification along with its types of devices,
applications, and architecture. In [23], Wang etal. described
the procedure of establishing the ZigBee network and its
various application. In their work, the advantages of using
ZigBee technology were also described that were cheap,
minimum power dissipation, safe, and reliable data transmis-
sion with the ceaseless upgrade of ZigBee protocol, and also
the improvement in the performance of ZigBee development
tool [24]. Also, they discussed the possibility of designing a
high-performance ZigBee wireless communication network
for their broad application space in real life. In [25], the
experimental results of the received signal strength indicator
(RSSI) are discussed. Before performing this experiment, it
was considered that RSSI would be a good distance indica-
tor. But after the experiment was performed it was concluded
that RSSI is a poor distance estimator when using wireless
sensors in the building.
1.1.4 Wi‑Fi
The IEEE protocol 802.11abg is used for WLANs and users
can surf the Internet when it is connected to an access point.
The Wi-Fi architecture is comprised of many components
that work together to provide WLAN. The basic cell of
Wi-Fi LAN is termed as a basic service set that contains
fixed as well as mobile stations. When a station moves out
to its basic service set, it is not able to communicate directly
with its other members of the basic service set (BSS). Based
on BSS, the protocol has provided two network configura-
tions, one is the independent basic service set (IBSS) while
the other is an extended service set (ESS). The IBSS network
configuration is used for ad-hoc networks as there is no pre-
planning to form this type of network. On the other hand,
ESS is formed with multiple BSSs. A distribution system
along with access points is used to create the network of ESS
which has arbitrary size and complexity.
Sikora etal. [26] have reviewed the interfering problem
on ZigBee due to Wi-Fi, microwave ovens, and blue tooth.
They deduced that when the duty cycle of Wi-Fi is high, it
has a critical interfering impact on ZigBee especially when
the carrier frequencies are also the same. Furthermore, it
was concluded that the packet error rate due to the interfer-
ence of Zigbee, Bluetooth, and Microwave ovens less than
10%, is negotiable. In [27], the authors described the cal-
culated existences between 3GLTE and Wi-Fi technology
in a heterogeneous network, the multi-mode single carrier
bands SCBs simultaneously send the data on licensed and
unlicensed bands. This approach is distributed totally along
with low signaling overhead. Li etal. [28] introduced a new
idea of using Wi-Fi technology to present a new adoptive
multi-rate scheme and pulse width code modulation scheme
which is based on that scheme. With free of cost broadband
sharing wireless resources and the remote real-time manage-
ment of the user power data, they saved the price. Shuaib
etal. [29] did a performance study about the co-existence
issues and throughput performance of ZigBee and Wi-Fi
(IEEE 802.11g). The outcome of the analysis showed that
up-link interference is more than down-link. Idris etal. [30]
have done a comparative study among Bluetooth and ZigBee
from the application point of view. The authors had taken
size, range, transmission time, and power consumption of
the network as distinguishing features and concluded that for
applications whose requirement is high data rates for short
distances, Bluetooth is the best option [31]. Khurram etal.
[32] has quantitatively assessed three short-range protocols
namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Bluetooth low energy (BLE)
for different data loads. It was concluded that the least power
consumption of ZigBee is up to 500 bytes, Wi-Fi is 800kb
and between 500 bytes and 800kb, BLE is the best option.
1.1.5 Ultra‑wideband
The popularity of UWB has increased due to the high speed
of indoor wireless communication. The bandwidth ranges
from 110 to 480 Mbps which can handle multimedia appli-
cations that include audio and video delivery in home net-
working. It replaces the cable in home networking, espe-
cially the high-speed USB 2.0. UWB uses pulse position or
time modulation. A UWB can regulate the time of flight at
different frequencies hence, this property helps in overcom-
ing the multi-path propagation.
Wang etal. [33] and Sadiq etal. [40] have contrasted the
access methods of IEEE 802.11e and UWB by keeping into
consideration the power management and throughput. The
perceived analysis has shown that the newly added Block
Ack and TXOP have enhanced the throughput of IEEE
802.11e and made it comparable to UWB [36]. The IEEE
802.15.3 has uncomplicated power management because
of TDMA access method utilization in the media access
control. Abinaayaa etal. [34] contrasted wireless technolo-
gies which include RF, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee. The
comparison has been done based on bandwidth, range, and
the number of bits transmitted per second. The authors con-
cluded that Zigbee has low-cost deployment for industrial
applications [35, 37]. In [41], introduced the role and need
of UWB antenna that rely on microstrip quasi-horn, horn,
abnormity monopole, microstrip meandered-loop, and a
bi-conical omnidirectional antenna. Antenna designing
was the major part of their work and got more attention for
UWB communication. Many researchers tried for antenna
designing that was more suitable for UWB. Mazhar etal.
[38] proposed a unique design of compact micro-strip with
step impedance microstrip UWB antenna. Its dimensions
were 34mm × 36mm (L × W) that was fabricated on FR-4

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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epoxy dielectric with relative permittivity of 4.4. Its operat-
ing frequency lied between 3 and 10.26GHz and the band-
width was 7.26GHz. This antenna was excited by wave port
[39, 42]. This antenna can support up to larger bandwidth
because of adding suitable slits and slots in the patch and
ground. A significant bandwidth could be achieved by vari-
ating the size of the ground plane and patch. That is why
these parameters are considered as key parameters for return
loss and bandwidth enhancement.
Figure2a shows the wireless network division among dif-
ferent networks with the reference of the data range. Low
data rate relates to Bluetooth and ZigBee while high data
rate relates to UWB. Similarly, Fig.2b also shows data rate
for mobility and Bluetooth and ZigBee relates with station-
ary range. But as users and data rates are both in moving
space then Wi-Fi and Wi-Max protocols are a preferable
choice.
2 Simulation andresults
Wireless technologies are an indispensable part of our
modern-day life. It reaps the benefits regarding mobility,
simplicity, and less cost. Wireless users can dynamically
create Ad-hoc networks and join and leave the network at
their ease. However, threats to data security, high power
consumption, less reliability due to interference are some
factors that snag the short-range wireless communication.
In this section, a comparison has been made for short-
range protocols namely Bluetooth, ZigBee, Ultra-wide-
band, and Wi-Fi. Figure3 shows a simple wireless per-
sonal area network hierarchy.
The performance of a WPAN can be measured in terms
of data coding efficiency, transmission time, and power
handling capabilities. A comparison has been made with
respect to transmission time, data coding efficiency and
power handling of four short-range wireless communica-
tion technologies namely, Bluetooth, ZigBee Ultra-wide-
band, and Wi-Fi.
The codding efficiency defines the performance and accu-
racy of a telecommunication system. The ratio of the data
size to the message size or in other words for the transmis-
sion of data total number of bytes used" is called data coding
efficiency. The formula to calculate efficiency is as follows:
In Eq.1, NMpay and NOvhl represent the maximum and
overhead data size, respectively, where Ndata is the total
data size. Figure4 shows the data coding efficiency for four
different technologies across the data size. The efficiency of
the coding increases as the data size increases. ZigBee and
Bluetooth give the best results for small data sizes while for
large data sizes, UWB, and Wi-Fi are preferable choices. To
make this graph, the parameters of the four short-range wire-
less technologies are given in Table2. From Fig.4, it is clear
that all the protocols except ZigBee have good efficiency of
about 94% for larger payload data size. The discontinuities
in the graph are due to data fragmentation. Bluetooth and
ZigBee have less data rate as compared to Wi-Fi and UWB.
However, they might be a good selection from the perspec-
tive of data coding efficiency as shown in Fig.4. In this
research, a general comparison has been done in Ad-hoc
mode and 2312 bytes are taken, respectively.
The factors, on which transmission time depends, are
the distance between two nodes, the size of the message,
(1)
P
codeEff =
N
data
Ndata +
[
Ndata
N
M pay ]
×NOvhl
×
100
Fig. 2 A wireless network showing data rate across a different proto-
cols b compared with mobility Fig. 3 Wireless personal area network hierarchy

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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and the data rate of the protocol. The transmission time
can be calculated using the following equation:
In Eq.2, Ndata, NMpay, and NOvhl represent data, pay-
load, and overhead size while Tbit and Tprop represent bit
and propagation time between any two nodes, respectively.
ZigBee has a lower data rate (i.e., 250 kbps) than the
other three protocols hence, its transmission time is longer.
However, UWB has the highest data rate (i.e., 110Mbitsec)
that is why its transmission time is less [43]. Hence, it is
clear that transmission time is directly proportional to data
payload size and inversely proportional to the data rate of
the WPAN protocol. Figure5 shows a comparison between
data coding efficiency and data size among four technologies
[44]. From Fig.5, it is evident that UWB has less transmis-
sion time among all the remaining three protocols. Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, and ZigBee comes after that and as the data pay-
load size escalates, the transmission time for all the four
protocols has also been raised. The transmission range also
plays a vital role in WPAN and it directly depends upon the
(2)
T
tx =Ndata +
(
Ndata
N
M pay
×N
Ovhl )
×Tbit +T
prop
transmission power related to the network [45]. The Friis
equation gives a strong connection between the transmitted
and received power as follows:
where Gt and Gr are transmitted and received gains of the
antenna, λ is the wavelength, and D is the distance between
two antennas.
D can be derived as follows:
Equation4 shows that the range decreases with the
increase in frequency [46]. If the power is kept constant, the
signal range variation with respect to frequency has been
shown in Fig.6. From the graph, it is clear that UWB propa-
gation of signal with 3.1GHz is the minimum among all the
short-range protocols. At low frequency, GPRS and GSM
cover maximum range ZigBee and Bluetooth are used for
short ranges and implemented in portable products with lim-
ited power of battery [47–49]. The power consumption for
both of these protocols is very low and, in some scenarios,
they do not noticeably affect the battery life.
Hence consume more power and are designed with a
substantial power supply. The Chip-set and properties of
different wireless protocols are given in Table 3. On the
basis of bit rate, the power consumption for each protocol
is shown in Fig.7. From the figure, it is clear that ZigBee
and Bluetooth consumed less power as compared to Wi-fi
and ultra-wideband. If the path loss factor, transmitted and
received gain is kept constant 1, and height of transmitter
(3)
P
r
Pt
=GtGr
(
𝜆
4
𝜋
D)2
,
(4)
D
=
1
4𝜋
𝜆
√
pr
P
1
G
i
G
i
Fig. 4 A comparison between data size and data coding efficiency
Table 2 Different wireless protocol parameters
Wireless technology Bluetooth ZigBee Wi-Fi UWB
Time of bits (μs) 4 802.15.1 0.01825 0.009
Data rate (M bitss) 0.72 0.25 54 110
Maximum data size 339 (DH5) 102 2312 2044
Maximum overhead size 1588 31 58 42
Code efficiency % 94.41 76.52 97.18 97.94
Fig. 5 A comparison between transmission time and data size

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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and receiver antenna is 1.5m, then transmitted power of all
the four protocols.
The power consumption of different wireless protocols is
shown in Table4. Another comparison of received power and
the range of the device is made for different protocols. From
Fig.8, it is clear that for a fixed size of the data packet, if
the transmitter and receiver distance is increased the received
power decreases. This is due to the power loss during the trans-
mission path. Wi-Fi consumption of power is more because of
the high communication range as compared to the remaining
short-range protocols.
2.1 Short‑range characteristics
Channel bandwidth, modulation type, receiving and transmis-
sion power are the main characteristics of short-range proto-
cols. The major differences among the short-range protocols
have been shown in Table5. All the protocols belong to the
IEEE standard of communication. It is clear from the study
above, that the transmission power is 0dB for Bluetooth and
ZigBee, while it is 20 dBm for Wi-Fi.
2.2 Bit error rate
The bit error rate is also an important parameter to judge the
performance of the wireless technology. It is the number of
errors in received bits of data. These errors can occur over
the channel, due to interference, noise, and distortion. Usu-
ally, BER is expressed in terms of a carrier to noise ratio and
denoted EB = N0, i.e., it is the ratio of energy and noise power
of a bit. Mathematically, it is expressed as follows:
(5)
BER
=
√
EB
N0
Fig. 6 A comparison between range and frequency transmission
Table 3 Chip-set and properties of different wireless protocols
Wireless technology Bluetooth ZigBee Wi-Fi UWB
VDD (V) 1.8 3 3.3 3.3
Tx (mA) 57 24.7 219 227.3
Rx (mA) 47 27 215 27
Bit rate 0.72 0.25 54 114
Chip-set BlueCore2 CC2430 CX53111 XS110
Fig. 7 Power consumption analysis of different protocols
Table 4 Power consumption of different wireless protocols
Wireless technology Bluetooth ZigBee Wi-Fi UWB
Transmitted power (mW) 0.1 0.0063 1 0.04
Fig. 8 A comparison between range and power transmission

Iran Journal of Computer Science
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3 Conclusion
The unlicensed frequency bands such as Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi have made a boost in the development of short-
range communication and market research indicates that
Wi-Fi will become a key technology that is shaping the
future of consumers around the globe. The Wi-Fi protocol
IEEE 802.11b/a/g has insufficient spectral efficiency for the
increasing traffic growth and connectivity demand of the
consumers. It is not possible to fulfill the requirement with
limited bandwidth available in the 2.4GHz band. Hence,
improvement has been done with the use of the 5GHz
band in IEEE 802.11n. The advancement in transmission
techniques due to multi-user MIMO and beam-forming
has boosted the Wi-Fi performance to a gigabit per second
which leads to IEEE 802.11 ac. This will create the future
introduction of IEEE 802.11ad which utilizes a 60GHz
band and the expected Wi-Fi speed may be increased up to
multiple gigabits per second. The IEEE 802.11ax will have
improved spectrum efficiency and throughput hence they can
be employed in highly dense areas.
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Table 5 Various characteristics of short-range protocols
Protocols Bluetooth Zigbee Wi-Fi UWB
IEEE spec 802.15.1 802.15.3a* 802.15.4 802.11 a/b/g
Power cons Medium Very low High Low
Complexity High Low High Medium
Operating band 2.4GHz 915MHz; 5GHz 10.6GHz
Signal rate 720 Kbs 250 Kbs 54 Mbs 110 Mbs
Range 10m 1000m 100m 102m
Tx power 10 dBm −25 to 0 dBm 20 dBm −41.3 dBmMHz
RF channels 79 110; 14(2.4GHz); 1 to 15
Bandwidth 1MHz 2MHz; 25–20MHz 0.5–7.5GHz
Modulation GFSK, CPFSK, 8-DPSK BPSK, QPSK, O-QPSK BPSK, QPSK, OFDM, M-QAM BPSK, PPM, PAM, PWM
Spreading FHSS DSSS MC-DSSS, CCK, OFDM DS-UWB, MB-OFDM
Basic cell Pico-net Star BSS Pico-net
Extension of the basic cell Scatter-net Cluster Tree, Mesh ESS Peer to peer
Max. number of nodes 8 65,000 2007 236
Data protection 16-bit CRC 16-bit CRC 32-bit CRC 32-bit CRC
Success metrics Cost convenience Reliability, power, cost Speed flexibility Throughput power cost
Application focus Cable replacement Monitoring control Data network, net monitoring Monitoring data network

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