IEEE BEGINS WIRELESS, LONG-WAVELENGTH
STANDARD FOR HEALTHCARE, RETAIL AND LIVESTOCK VISIBILITY
NETWORKS
IEEE P1902.1™ Standard to Offer Local Network
Protocol for Thousands of Low-Cost Radio Tags Having
a Long Battery Life
Contacts: John K. Stevens: Chair of the P1902.1
Working Group
+1 617-395-7616, john@visible-assets.com
or
Karen McCabe, IEEE Senior Marketing Manager
+1 732-562-3824, k.mccabe@ieee.org
PISCATAWAY, N.J., USA, 8 June 2006 The IEEE
has begun work on a new standard, IEEE P1902.1™,
which will improve upon the visibility network protocol
known as RuBee™. RuBee is a bidirectional, on-demand,
peer-to-peer, radiating, transceiver protocol operating
at wavelengths below 450 Khz. This protocol works
in harsh environments with networks of many thousands
of tags and has an area range of 10 to 50 feet.
One of the advantages of long-wavelength technology
is that the radio tags can be low in cost, near credit
card thin (1.5 mm), and fully programmable using 4
bit processors. Despite their high functionality,
RuBee radio tags have a proven battery life of ten
years or more using low-cost, coin-size lithium batteries.
The RuBee protocol works with both active radio tags
and passive tags that have no battery.
IEEE P1902.1, "IEEE Standard for Long Wavelength
Wireless Network Protocol", will provide for
asset visibility networking that fills the gap between
the non-networked, non-programmable, backscattered,
RFID tags widely used for asset tracking and the high-bandwidth
radiating protocols for IEEE 802.11™ local area
networks and IEEE 802.15™ personnel area and
data networks.
IEEE P1902.1 will offer a "real-time, tag searchable"
protocol using IPv4 addresses and subnet addresses
linked to asset taxonomies that run at speeds of 300
to 9,600 Baud. RuBee Visibility Networks are managed
by a low-cost Ethernet enabled router. Individual
tags and tag data may be viewed as a stand-alone,
web server from anywhere in the world. Each RuBee
tag, if properly enabled, can be discovered and monitored
over the World Wide Web using popular search engines
(e.g., Google™) or via the Visible Asset's ".tag"
Tag Name Server.
RuBee networks and tags are distinguished from most
RFID tags in that they are unaffected by liquids and
can be used underwater and underground. IEEE P1902.1
devices will be able to be used as implantable medical
sensors having a 10-to-15-year battery life, depending
on the number of reads and writes. The ability of
RuBee tags to maintain performance around steel, so
they work well when steel shelves are present, removes
a key obstacle for low-cost deployment of RFID in
retail, item-level tracking environments.
"Long-wavelength visibility networks have many
applications with respectable ROI's in healthcare,
agriculture, government and retailing," says
John Stevens, chair of the P1902.1 Working Group and
Chairman of Visible Assets Inc. "Visibility networks
are now providing a wealth of real-time inventory
data, timely billing information, audit trails and
point-of-use data with little or no process change
within an organization.
"The use of visibility networks may include
providing the status and location of people or high-value
assets in a user-configurable area, as well as providing
audit trails that meet 21CFRPart11, SEC Rule 17a-4,
HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, and DoD 5015.2. Since RuBee
is a peer-to-peer, on-demand protocol, tags can issue
"pair-wise" matching alarms. They also can
provide sensor alarms and data logs, e.g., a hospital
staff could verify that blood was held at the correct
temperature during distribution or that the correct
drug and blood type are used during an operation."
IEEE P1902.1 will be developed within the IEEE Corporate
Standards Program. It is targeted for completion in
late 2007.
"We're developing IEEE P1902.1 to encourage
and support the growth of visibility networks within
many industries," says Stevens. "The standard
will be essential for the widespread, international
commercial use of RuBee.
"To speed deployment, we decided to work within
the IEEE Corporate Standards Program. This program
has been highly supportive and given us strong technical
and standards development assistance, as well as extensive
TCP/IP expertise. IEEE also provides dedicated services,
such as project management, that we'll need to get
our job done quickly."
The new IEEE P1902.1 standard will address physical
and data-link layers based on the existing working
RuBee protocol now in use. The new IEEE standard will
support interoperation of RuBee tags, RuBee chips,
RuBee network routers and other equipment now slated
to be rolled out by several different manufacturers.
RuBee networks are already deployed in commercial
applications, including: smart shelves for high-value
medical devices in hospitals and operating rooms;
smart, in-store and warehouse shelves for inventory
tracking; and a variety of agricultural visibility
networks for livestock, elk and other exotic animals.
Stevens adds, "The formation of the P1902.1
Working Group has attracted a broad array of members,
including medical device manufacturers, retail vendors,
networking companies, several major hospitals, and
hardware, software, silicon and search vendors, and
others who support or use visibility networks. A widely-deployed
long-wavelength standard will serve as a platform
for growth in many industries, so working group members
are motivated to produce a high-quality and practical
working standard as quickly as possible."
About the IEEE Standards Association
The IEEE Standards Association, a globally recognized
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through an open process that brings diverse parts
of an industry together. These standards set specifications
and procedures based on current scientific consensus.
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standards and more than 400 standards in development.
For information on IEEE-SA see: http://standards.ieee.org/.
About the IEEE
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nearly 30 percent of the world's literature in the
electrical and electronics engineering, computing
and control technology fields. This nonprofit organization
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conferences each year. Additional information about
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