IEEE 1902.1 Addresses RuBee Wireless Visibility Networks
February 19, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) approved IEEE 1902.1 - Standard for Long Wavelength Wireless Network Protocol, which is designed to improve upon the visibility network protocol known as RuBee.
The standard is expected to be used in health care for managing patient flow and high value assets, high security government facilities, assets visibility and mission critical tool management in aerospace industries, firearm management and visibility in government armories, livestock management and mobile asset management, according to the IEEE.
RuBee is a bi-directional, on-demand, peer-to-peer, radiating, transceiver protocol operating at wavelengths below 450 KHz. It works in harsh environments with networks of thousands of tags and has an area range of 10 to 50 feet, experts said.
"Establishing RuBee as an IEEE standard will offer a range of benefits to the health care industry, government law enforcement agencies, livestock industry, retailers, industrial manufacturers and RuBee equipment systems manufacturers," said John K. Stevens, CEO and chairman of Visible Assets Inc. and chair of the IEEE 1902.1 working group.
"RuBee tags are ideal in situations where bandwidth is not an issue, but where low cost, high tag count, long battery life and use in harsh environments, such as near steel and water, are critical performance criteria," he said.
IEEE 1902.1 offers a real-time, tag-searchable protocol using Internet protocol (IP) like addresses and subnet addresses linked to asset taxonomies that run at speeds of 300 to 9,600 baud.
RuBee visibility networks are managed by an Ethernet-enabled router. Individual tags and tag data may be viewed as a stand-alone web server from anywhere in the world, according to IEEE.
Each RuBee tag, if properly enabled, can be discovered and monitored over the Internet using search engines or via visible asset's ".tag" tag name server, experts said.
The IEEE 1902.1 standard was developed within the IEEE standards corporate program.
The working group included members from medical device manufacturers, retail vendors, networking companies, hospitals and hardware, software, silicon and search vendors and others who support or use visibility networks.
Source: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA).