Telecommunications Industry Association Focuses on Standards for Smart Devices

That creation of standards for smart devices that enable, monitor and ensure interoperable interfaces to the network is reportedly the focus of the new Smart Device Communications Engineering Committee created through the member companies of the Telecommunications Industry Association.

 

The new committee, TR-50, is focusing on producing a ubiquitous protocol for communicating with smart devices used in industries like manufacturing, medical, building automation/home automation, transportation, entertainment, semiconductor, communication and energy distribution.

 

TIA (News - Alert) Board members, as well as other companies, have expressed support for this initiative. According to Charles Kenmore, TIA board member and chairman of its Standards & Technical Committee, while other protocols may accommodate accessing subsets of the information and events, no other organization addresses common requirements and interoperability of essential intelligent/smart devices across industries.

 

The SDC Committee will consider possible use cases that include monitoring, as well as remote changing of state. The types of information and events that any Smart Devices Communications Specification needs to accommodate are equipment fault events, preventive maintenance events, energy metrics, network metrics, equipment data, remote diagnostics and configuration management.

 

TIA will work to incorporate the best of many specifications that have been created over the last 15 years in order to develop a new protocol specification. At the same time, it will avoid mistakes of the past, thereby creating a flexible, adaptable technology protocol that will survive well into the future.

 

According to Cheryl Blum, TIA’s vice president for standards and technology, the TIA aims to foster collaboration and coordination with other appropriate organizations addressing various components of smart device communication systems. As this initiative has stimulated interest among companies whose business is in smart devices, the TIA is expecting a widespread level of involvement and support.

 

Accredited by the American National Standards Institute, the TIA is a trade association that represents the global information and communications technology industries through standards development, government affairs, business opportunities, market intelligence, certification and environmental regulatory compliance. It enhances the business environment for companies involved in telecommunications, broadband, mobile wireless, information technology, networks, cable, satellite, unified communications and emergency communications. The TIA is a major contributor of voluntary industry standards that support global trade and commerce in communications products and systems.