IEEE approves 1902.1 standard for wireless visibility networks

The IEEE has approved a new wireless standard, IEEE 1902.1, “Standard for Long Wavelength Wireless Network Protocol,” which improves 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. The standard is expected to be used in healthcare for managing patient flow and high valued 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.

IEEE 1902.1 offers a “real-time, tag searchable” protocol using 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 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 Internet using popular search engines or via Visible Asset’s “.tag” Tag Name Server.

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, several major hospitals, and hardware, software, silicon and search vendors, and others who support or use visibility networks.