Enabling Consumer Connectivity Through Consensus Building

Array
Guest Contributor

Because Consumer Connectivity Begins with Industry Making Consensus.
The smart grid. Electric vehicles. Home networking. Mobile video.

The things that are transforming our lives right now and will shape how we live, work and play in the future are all built on one idea: connectivity. These new technologies don’t work unless they work together. New products don’t return on investment unless key players play together.

But when new technologies and new products connect at the deepest levels, manufacturers, developers and end users around the world create possibilities no one imagined before.

Before you can create products that fulfill this vision of consumer connectivity, you need a place where industry can build consensus. The IEEE SA helps foster consumer connectivity, bringing industry together to craft interoperable standards for products that consumers crave. IEEE SA’s processes for consensus building and inclusion of all important voices have an unparalleled track record when it comes to creating the standards that connect people. If your company wants to be involved in the decisions driving the next wave of innovation, you need to be at the IEEE SA.

IEEE SA is also collaborating with other Standards Development Organizations such as SAE International to create a more efficient and collaborative standards-development environment.

The Smart Grid and the Positively Brilliant Refrigerator
Developing smart grids around the world will produce benefits — from the ability to respond to demand with more or less generation, to identifying waste and reducing costs.

But it’s connecting to what’s in the home that will produce the greatest efficiencies. Because the home is where the grid connects to the user.

By bringing the user online, the smart grid can manage demand, eliminate waste, lower peak loads, and stimulate investment in more energy efficient appliances. Utilities, manufacturers and suppliers are all benefiting from IEEE standards like the ones listed below, which help to make the Smart Grid work with their products — and our homes.

Smart grid into home devices standards

Connecting the Car of the Future to the Here and Now
The first few electric cars starting to hit the market today will pave the way for millions in the decades to come — and how those vehicles will interface with our homes and the electrical grid is being shaped by the feedback of owners and manufacturers today.

IEEE Standards like the ones shown here play an important role in helping ensure that the infrastructure for a new product category like electric vehicles is stable enough that it can be rolled out efficiently, yet open enough to pave the way for innovation and improvement.

Electric vehicle standards

The House that Knows What it’s Doing.
The first wave of home networking was about connecting devices so humans could communicate. The next wave will be about empowering the devices themselves— to interact to make your life easier. Home entertainment centers that know which room you’re in, and play music there. Refrigerators that know when you’re getting low on yogurt, and order it. Monitors that know if a relative isn’t doing what she normally does, and can request help. But making a home-wide system with components from many manufacturers work requires connectivity standards and an assurance of interoperability. IEEE SA is working to help devise standards in many areas, to realize this futuristic vision of ubiquitous communication… that is quickly becoming our reality.

Home networking standards

Access Hollywood — Or Your Friends — From the Palm of Your Hand
Video is the next frontier for mobile phones. People want to be able to create and enjoy content wherever they are.

But doing so puts new demands on the bandwidth of mobile networks — and on the patience of those who have to wait for their favorite video to buffer and load. Real-time mobile video chats can be even more challenging, with users often experiencing blocky, jittery feeds from friends’ cell phones.

IEEE SA is working on standards to help improve the mobile video experience. For entertainment content, that means intelligently routing and replicating content to a portable device’s dedicated local storage. For mobile video chat and other forms of user to user sharing, it means enabling the network to sense bandwidth fluctuations and adapt, thereby maintaining the illusion of a smoothly flowing video stream.

Mobile Video Standards

Related Links

 

Share this Article