The Register has a good summary of this week’s IEEE standards activities in Portland this week.
This week s IEEE summit highlighted the breakneck pace of change that is driving innovation in wireless, but also threatening to break its standards process apart. Political wars rage in areas like UltraWideBand and fast Wi-Fi, but more fundamental debates are taking place over how different specifications should coexist and which territory they should occupy.As Wi-Fi reaches up to WiMAX range and WiMAX aims for the mobility of 802.20, the most important IEEE group of all may be 802.22, looking at the cognitive radio that will enable devices to use all three and to take advantage of proposed opening of US television spectrum.
The next Wi-Fi standards in line to be ratified are 802.11e for quality of service, later this year, followed in the 1-2 year timeframe by 802.11n for 108Mbps speeds, 802.11r for fast hand-off between access points, and 802.11s for mesh networking.
Further down the track is 802.11p, and further taskforces are mooted for performance prediction for testing (likely to be 802.11t) and interworking with external networks. It is also possible that a standing committee will be formed to look at security issues on an ongoing basis, especially to ensure that these new extensions do not involve new security problems, and there is also the 802.11m standing committee, for standards maintenance.
For 802.16, the next priorities are the mobile 802.16e, tabled for late this year, and an 802.16f extension addressing mesh using directional antennas, slated for late 2005.
For personal area networks, the fight drags on to choose the base for the 802.15.3a standard, a higher speed, UWB-based extension to 802.15.3 or WiMedia. While 802.15.3 addresses high data rate, short range networks, its cousin 802.15.4 or ZigBee looks at low data rate, low power equivalents. Its current major project is an a extension of its own, also based on UWB.
This morning, DailyWireless sat in on a review of documents and voting (mostly procedural). The 802.22 working group, apparently, got it’s wish for a stand-alone body to develop a standard for broadband wireless in TV spectrum. When asked by a member to clarify the actual work of 802.22, chairman Carl Stevenson kept his cards close to his vest, not going into details. A resolution to develop (document C802.16-04_20doc) was refered to for forwarding to the ITU. That passed with a vote of 55 (for), 0 (against) and 28 (abstaining).
This group would be a spin-off of the existing 802.18, also called the Radio Regulatory TAG, which exists to provide the 802 wireless working groups with regulatory expertise. A key technology would be the development of a cognitive radio that would be able to detect when a wireless device might interfere with an incumbent broadcaster s signal.
The 802.16 committee, which develops Metropolitan Area Networks (www.wirelessMAN.org) wanted to keep it within their purview, but the Executive Committee of the IEEE sided with Carl Stevenson, chair of the 802.18 for radio standards, to develop a separate group.
DailyWireless will attend the final Plenary session this afternoon and try to get some additional factoids and opinions.
DailyWireless has additional coverage on the IEEE meeting at IEEE: Cat Fight on TV, Intelligent Transportation Gets 802.11p, Wi-LAN Suing Wi-Max?, IEEE Will Vote on UWB (Again), Roger That WiMan, Schism in High-speed WiFi?, and IEEE Meets in Portland.
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