ANT (network)
| Industry | Wireless Sensor Networks |
|---|---|
| Physical range | 100m |
ANT is a proprietary (but open access) multicast wireless sensor network technology designed and marketed by ANT Wireless (a division of Dynastream Innovations, in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of Garmin). It defines a wireless communications that enables hardware operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band to communicate by establishing standard rules for co-existence, data representation, signalling, authentication, and error detection. It is conceptually similar to Bluetooth low energy, but is oriented towards usage with sensors.
ANT-powered nodes are capable of acting as slaves or masters within a wireless sensor network concurrently. This means the nodes can act as transmitters, receivers, or transceivers to route traffic to other nodes. In addition, every node is capable of determining when to transmit based on the activity of its neighbors.
ANT is primarily incorporated into sports and fitness sensors, though it may additionally be used for other purposes. The transceivers are embedded in equipment such as heart rate monitors, watches, cycling power meters, cadence meters, and distance and speed monitors to form wireless personal area networks (PANs) monitoring a user's performance. ANT Wireless has been attempting to diversify the protocol's applications into other sectors, including health, home automation, and industrial applications.
Companies using ANT include:
ANT can be configured to spend long periods in a low-power “sleep” mode (consuming of the order of microamps of current), wake up briefly to communicate (when consumption rises to a peak of 22mA (at -5dB) during reception and 13.5mA (at -5 dB) during transmission) and return to sleep mode. Average current consumption for low message rates is less than 60 microamps on some devices.
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