Home Area Networks

The Home Area Network (HAN) is a technology that interconnects all the home appliances and also links them to the internet via a central home portal. Devices such as personal computers, laptops, telephones, washing machines, security systems and entertainment systems can be tied together with the internet to facilitate remote controlling and inter-operation. The application diversity and dissimilar bandwidth requirements of each device are the constraints in HAN design. A HAN is meant to be user friendly, low cost, flexible and scalable without significant performance degradation.

There are different technologies adopted to develop the HAN infrastructure. Home Phone Network Access (HPNA) aims at providing internet access to home appliances through the single Telephone wiring. This is possible by using different frequencies for different applications on the same wire employing frequency division multiplexing. Power Line Modems is yet another HAN technology that tries to deliver broadband via power lines supplied to our homes. But the medium is noisy and the cost associated is high. Therefore we need to look out wireless solution alternatives. Home Access Networks are wireless networks that provide wireless internet connection to homes directly and enable communication of devices.