ANT is a wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks.
ANT is an ultra low power protocol that is able to operate off of small batteries, such as coin cells.
ANT peripherals typically operate in a broadcast mode that can be received from multiple handsets or displays simultaneously.
ANT+ (built on the base ANT protocol) defines standardized device profiles that specify data formats, channel parameters and network keys. A “profile” defines a specific use case, or data set. The most common ANT+ profile is heart rate (HR), and is used by many heart rate monitors in the market today.
Other examples of ANT+ profiles include:
- Bicycle Speed & Cadence (S&C)
- Bicycle Power (PWR)
- Activity (ACT)
- Weight Scale (WGT)
- Blood Pressure (BP)
Also, you can have several sensors work with a single receiving display or have several receiving displays read the information from a single sensor.
ANT+ ensures trouble-free interoperability, allowing ANT+ products by different makers to work together as long as all paired devices support the same profiles (denoted by teh respective ANT+ activity icons).
ANT+ is already integrated into a lot of mobile phones. Here is a list of the ANT+ enabled phones in our specifications database. The list is probably incomplete and we apologise for that.
