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ANTD Researchers Lead Development of Standards for Wireless Personal Area Networks
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) approved the IEEE 802.15.1 standard for wireless personal area networks (WPAN) on March 21, 2002. This was the long awaited formal acceptance of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group's (SIG) Core Specification by a recognized standards body. Although the Bluetooth Core Specification defines all the layers from physical layer to the application layer, only the lower layers, which are considered within the scope of the IEEE 802 Medium Access Control and Physical layers, are included. This wireless technology operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band and provides voice communications at 64 bit/s and data transfers up to 732 kbit/s at distances up to 10 meters. This technology is meant to be inexpensive, thus positioning itself for system integration as one of the pervasive computing technologies.
ANTD has been involved in this effort since the Bluetooth SIG first released the specifications and the IEEE 802.15 Working Group was formed. The work consisted of reviewing, verifying, and validating the protocols being defined. As a means to speed, and ideally show the completeness and correctness of the protocols, ANTD undertook the task of creating a formal description of the text prose using the ITU-T standardized formal description language called Specification and Description Language (SDL) that was included as an informative annex in the standard. SDL uses a finite state machine and describes the behavior in the form similar to a flow chart. This process generated thousands of comments and suggested changes that were incorporated in the Bluetooth specifications v1.1. In addition, ANTD held editorship of several sub-clauses in the draft standard and participated in the creation of the Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement (PICS) proforma.
IEEE 802.15.1 is the first in a series of new WPAN technologies being developed in IEEE 802.15. Under development are standards for higher (20 Mbit/s) and lower (250 kbit/s) rate WPANs.
For more information check out the official IEEE press release
For more information about ANTD's participation in this effort Contact:
Nada Golmie, (301)975-4190 or David Cypher, (301)975-4855