Standard Bodies

Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) formed a study group in 1998 to research the need for Personal Area Network standards and was later formed into a Workgroup P802.15.

Five task groups were set up to address the following potential issues faced by WPANs:

Task Group 1 (TG1): Released 802.15.1 standard in June 2002.

This is a standard for WPANs derived from Bluetoothv1.1 foundation specifications. This standard is meant to be an additional resource to Bluetooth implementers.

·                                  Task Group 2 (TG2):

Since most of the WPANs and WLANs use the unlicensed spectrum, in the range of 2.4 GHz, there exists a potential for mutual interference. To address this issue of coexistence of WPANs with WLANs (802.11), IEEE formed Task Group 2.

This task group is studying Collaborative and non-collaborative mechanisms. Collaborative mechanism involves negotiation between the interfering wireless networks. Non-collaborative mechanism is employed when there can be no data exchange between such networks.

·                        Task Group 3 (TG3):

This task group is entrusted with responsibility of publishing standards for high data rate WPANs to support multi media and other applications requiring high data rates. This task group is currently developing 802.15.3 standard, which caters to high rate WPANs (currently at 55Mbps).

·                                  Task Group 3a (TG3a):

This task group is formed to define alternative Physical layer specification to achieve high data rates. In March 2003, this study group is planning to review the proposals.

·                                  Task Group 4 (TG4):

This task group is formed to arrive at low power, low data rate (less than 250 kbps) WPAN networking standards. Draft version D18 is being developed.