WPAN standards for IoT continue to develop use cases

How can organizations use WPAN standards for IoT?

The family of IEEE 802.15 standards are well suited to support the rapid growth of IoT applications with peer standards, such as IEEE 802.11. Each standard has specific characteristics aligned and optimized to serve specific IoT application requirements. Some IoT applications require devices that run for years on a small battery, have reliable and strong connectivity in an outdoor environment with many obstructions or need a high data rate. The standards are optimized for high throughput, low operating power or long range using radio or light. The variety of broad-market and specialty standards promotes rapid growth of IoT to be implemented with interoperable connectivity that meets unique sets of requirements.

These standards include short-range body area networks for medical applications and the smart utility network that can connect electricity meters and other grid devices with a mesh that covers a large city. They define over-the-air wireless protocols that allow devices from different manufacturers to exchange messages and data. Most, but not all, 802.15 standards use unlicensed and shared wireless spectrum and define how devices can cooperate and operate without causing interference with other devices.

The family of IEEE 802.15 standards are well suited to support the rapid growth of IoT applications with peer standards, such as IEEE 802.11.

How have WPAN standards for IoT developed?

The IEEE 802.15 Working Group has developed multiple standards in over 20 years of operation. Many of these standards are built around IEEE 802.15.4 and its multiple amendments for wireless connectivity serving diverse applications.

The 802.15.4 standards have been the most widely adopted in the 802.15 family to date. With the addition of the 802.15.4g amendment in 2012, devices implementing Wi-SUN have started to ramp up rapidly, serving utility applications, smart cities and outdoor IoT use cases.

The 802.15.4 family contains multiple physical layers optimized for different applications. The first 802.15.4 Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum physical layer serves as the wireless radio technology for machine-to-machine and IoT networks and has been adopted for a number of specifications including ZigBee, International Society of Automation 100.11a, WirelessHART, Thread Group and SNAP. The 802.15.4g amendment introduced the smart utility networks physical layer in an outdoor environment, which forms the basis of the Wi-SUN networks. The 802.15.4a amendment introduced the ultra-wideband (UWB) physical layer, with further improvements underway in the 802.15.4z amendment. This layer supports ranging and location. The 802.15.16t task group is developing an amendment to support licensed narrowband operation for mission-critical IoT.