The Wi-SUN Alliance, a global body dedicated to promoting products and services for smart utility networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4g standard, has released a specification for field area networks (FAN) to support open standards based networking for smart city applications.
Wi-SUN’s director of standards, Bob Heile, said: “As the industry need for smart city and robust, secure IoT deployments grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to move away from closed, proprietary protocols to solutions using open internationally recognised standards.”
He said the Wi-SUN FAN solution was ideal for these applications, because it provides “multi-vendor interoperable, multi-service and secure IPv6 communications over an IEEE 802.15.4g based wireless mesh network.”
The Wi-SUN Alliance is a non-profit association of over 100 members. Membership includes semiconductor and product manufacturers, utilities, government agencies and educational establishments. The Wi-SUN Certified program was launched in January 2014 and the organisation says there are now close to 100 products in the market certified for interoperability.
The IEE802.14g standard was approved by IEEE in March 2012. Its development was set in train in 2008 because there were no wireless communications standards for peer-to-peer field area networks. The Wi-SUN Alliance was established in 2012 to identify the functionality for the many applications of the standard, to create profiles to meet these requirements and to create a testing regime to verify compliance.
Its initial focus was Japan, but it has now become much more global: in November 2015 it announced support in its specifications for frequency bands in SE Asia (920-925MHz in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam; 919-923MHz in Malaysia; 918-920MHz in the Philippines; and 917-923 MHz in Korea).
In June 2015 it released a new specification for WiFi connectivity in advanced metering infrastructure, distribution automation and smart cities that it said could be applied in most regions of the world, Australia included.
