1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of allowing a device to communicate with another device in a wireless personal network (WPAN).
2. Description of the Related Art
A wireless personal area network (WPAN) is a wireless network in which devices arranged at short distances from one another perform data communication at low power. In a WPAN, devices belonging to a piconet share channels with each other by using a time division multiple access (TDMA) method. That is, devices willing to perform data communication occupy a channel exclusively for a channel time allocation (CTA) which is allocated by a device referred to as a piconet coordinator (PNC) to perform data communication.
Recently, as technologies for transmitting a large amount of data in a WPAN at a frequency of 60 Hz at high speed have been developed using millimeter waves having a short wavelength in the range of about 1 to about 10 mm and having significant directivity, various PHY communication modes such as a single carrier (SC) method, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) method, and an on-off keying (OOK) method may be used in a WPAN.
Since devices using different PHY communication modes may not communication with each other, a device supporting a plurality of PHY communication modes may appropriately change a PHY communication mode, if necessary. However, conventionally, since it is assumed that all devices belonging to a piconet use a single PHY communication mode, an internal process is not be defined in order for the device supporting the PHY communication modes to communicate other devices in the piconet.