Designing for wireless LAN communications

Increasingly, the wireless communications industry has been moving toward networks that communicate over smaller areas at lower power levels. Until recently, most wireless communications were in the form of satellite transmissions. In the early 90s, the mobile cellular phone industry exploded and work has begun on short range wireless networks to send data. BBN's BodyLAN project proposes to take this progression one step further, by lowering the power consumption for extremely short range systems by more than an order of magnitude. Designing a low power system of this type requires an understanding of the capabilities of VLSI technology, the interrelation between hardware and software techniques, and some knowledge of radio frequency propagation. In this article, we discuss the engineering pitfalls to avoid, and the trade-offs inherent in such a design, using our experience with BodyLAN as a starting point for further development of such a system.