Thomas M. Siep

Paving the way for personal area network standards: an overview of the IEEE P802.15 Working Group for Wireless Personal Area Networks

The process of creating international standards is a mystery to most people, even to the technologists who use them every day. This article describes the origins and processes of the IEEE Project 802.15 Working Group for Wireless Personal Area Networks and their effort to bring standardization to the Bluetooth specification. The committee of experts that comprises P802.15 is chartered with codifying the physical characteristics and protocols used to construct small, low-power, ad hoc networks used for wireless interconnection of personal electronic devices.