News & Press releases

Body Area Networking standard attracts major industry attention

The recent IEEE 802.15.6 Working Group (WG) meeting in Montreal, Canada drew significant interest from major industry players including Philips, General Electric (GE), Texas Instruments, Toumaz and Samsung. Over five days (May 11-15th), more than 40 proposals were presented, including four from Holst Centre’s Program on Ultra-Low Power (ULP) Radios.

Amongst the industry presenters were the MedWiN Alliance (an industrial alliance jointly set up by GE, Philips, TI and Toumaz) and NICT, a research centre representing Japanese businesses. Several proposals were put forward by Samsung, and other major technology players including Motorola, Qualcomm and Fujitsu also presented.

Holst Centre’s four proposals included a narrowband PHY for ISM band communications and a corresponding MAC proposal as well as an UWB PHY proposal, in part inspired by the recent IEEE 802.15.4a standard in which IMEC also played an active role. Finally a MAC proposal coupled to the UWB PHY was also proposed.

Olivier Rousseaux, Business Development Manager ULP Wireless and Guido Dolmans, Activity Leader/Principal Researcher ULP Wireless, attended the meeting, “Typically there might only be a few proposals for a new standard. So the fact that more than 40 proposals were presented shows just how much attention this standard is attracting. With so many proposals and interested parties, the next challenge will be agreeing what goes into the final standard.”

The scope of the IEEE 802.15.6 WG is to define a new standard for Wireless Body Area Networking (WBAN). This covers wireless networks operating at up to 3 m around, on and inside the body and supporting a mix of medical applications and multi-media / consumer applications. Holst Centre and IMEC have been closely involved in this standard from the initial study phase. They have helped determine the application scope and technical requirements, many of which are quite demanding – data rates from 10 kbits/s up to 10 Mbits/s, guaranteed quality of service (critical for biomedical applications) and very low power consumption.

From the initial discussions at the meeting, the general consensus was that the standard will need to support several PHY layers under on unifying MAC layer. One of the PHY layers may be for medical implants only. GE is currently lobbying the FCC to assign a dedicated frequency band for medical communications around the body. Next, ISM band and UWB PHYs are expected to be adopted by the group. The next meeting, being held from 13-17 July in San Fransisco, will start the merger activity where members decide on which proposals to include in the final standard.