IEEE is engaged in the development of a wireless, long-wavelength standard designated as IEEE P1902.1 and entitled IEEE Standard for Long Wavelength Wireless Network Protocol. The objective of this standard is to ensure interoperability for a local network protocol that will provide visibility for thousands of low-cost radio tags having a long battery life. "The standard will improve upon the visibility network protocol known as RuBee," said John K. Stevens, chairman of the P1902.1 working group.

As used here 'visibility' connotes that every item actually becomes a functioning web site. RuBee is a bidirectional, on-demand, peer-to-peer, radiating transceiver protocol operating at wavelengths below 450 kHz. This protocol, which employs magnetic, rather than radio waves, functions in harsh environments with networks of many thousands of tags and has an area range of 10 feet to 50 feet.

"RFID, which is essentially an electronic barcode, was begun as a program to replace the more traditional bar codes," said Stevens. "The original objectives of RFID were to put them on razor blades, on toothpaste and on aspirin bottles. Though RFID has been around for a long time, a massed, focused effort did not really begin until approximately 1999. That is when Wal-Mart said they were going to put RFID technology in all of its stores, on its products. If these tags were to cost five cents each, they were prepared to buy hundreds of billions each year," he said.

However, there have been some problems with RFID-—they don't work well around aluminized packaging, nor do they work well around water. So Wal-Mart backed off at the item level and began doing pallets.

However, RFID was devised for tracking, not really for visibility. Whereas RFID is a barcode replacement, visibility is a web site for everything. As we have said, visibility implies that every item becomes a web site.

One of the advantages of long-wavelength technology is that the radio tags can be low in cost, near credit-card thin (1.5 mm), and fully programmable using four-bit processors. Despite their high functionality, RuBee radio tags have a proven battery life of 10 years or more using low-cost, coin-size lithium batteries. The RuBee protocol works with active radio tags as well as passive tags that have no battery.

RuBee networks and tags are distinguished from most RFID tags in that they are unaffected by liquids and can be used underwater and underground. The ability of RuBee tags to maintain performance around steel, so they work well when steel shelves are present, removes a key obstacle for cost-effective deployment of visibility networks in medical, agricultural and retail, item-level environments.

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