ieee

The IEEE is stepping up its involvement in energy-related technologies with its latest working groups.

The engineering organization announced today the creation of a standards efforts for grid storage and another for measuring greenhouse gas reductions from renewable energy and energy-efficient products.

The grid storage effort, part of the IEEE's P2030 smart grid interoperability working group, will create guidelines for defining the technical interfaces between energy storage systems, such as communications to other smart-grid equipment.

The effort, expected to take about two years, will focus on hybrid storage systems that combine different technologies, such as batteries, ultracapacitors, and flywheels. … Read more

It is a good idea to buy Wi-Fi products certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance if you want to ensure the interoperability between products of different vendors.

Similarly, you want to look for HomePlug-certified products when shopping for power-line network devices.

Power-line devices are those that enable the electrical wiring of your home to transmit data signals, hence allowing for extending the network to different parts of the property without running network cables.

Most of these devices are based on the HomePlug AV standard, but products from different vendors are not guaranteed to work with one another until they are tested … Read more

WALTHAM, Mass.--Five years ago, energy storage on the U.S. electric grid was almost nonexistent, but demonstration projects have shown that storage makes the grid more reliable and cleaner, according to a Department of Energy official.

Imre Gyuk, the program manager for energy storage research at the DOE, was the keynote speaker today at an IEEE conference on grid technologies where he said the grid storage industry is in the process of scaling up. Costs remain a barrier to putting more storage buffers onto the grid, but the question of costs may be a "red herring," he … Read more

WALTHAM, Mass.--Technologies now being tested on the grid are a step toward strengthening the U.S. energy infrastructure and boosting the economy, according to speakers at an IEEE conference on the grid.

After relatively little change for decades, the electric grid is poised for a technical facelift that could include small nuclear power plants, new forms of grid storage, a network of electric vehicles, and power electronics that control large flows of energy efficiently, speakers said here yesterday. The IEEE, which stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is a professional organization of engineers.

The pace of … Read more

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a...swarm of giant Honeycomb cereal? Swiss researchers are developing a robotic platform consisting of multiple single-propeller machines that autonomously dock with each other and take flight.

The Distributed Flight Array, under development at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), may look like a kid's remote-controlled toy, but it's a neat example of swarm robotics.

Each vehicle is simply designed, with wheels for ground motion, one propeller, a computer, and infrared sensors that measure the flight angle. They join at random through magnetic links and drive around together.

When it's time to take off, the modules hover for a bit and then fly to a predetermined altitude. They exchange information over a network, maintaining level flight for the whole platform by adjusting individual thrust. As seen in the video below, the researchers seem barely able to regain control of their creation once it takes flight.

The IDSC researchers have shown in simulated and experimental tests that the array can work with anywhere from 2 to 20 propeller vehicles. But they've only flown up to 4 joined together so far.

When it's time to return to the ground, the modules come apart. Their sturdy plastic construction can withstand the impact of a fall from more than 6 feet.

The IDSC group has been developing the array since 2008. Last month, their study was named one of the best conference paper finalists at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Anchorage, Alaska.

The researchers don't mention possible applications for the Distributed Flight Array, but a glance at other IDSC projects such as the autonomously balancing cube shows the institute is open-minded enough to pursue whimsical, artistic endeavors when it comes to robots. Building a swarm of intelligent hunter-killer flying bots must be the farthest thing from their minds. … Read more

A big shortcoming of powerline adapters is the fact that they tend not to interoperate across vendors. For example, the adapters made by Cisco are unlikely to work with products made by Netgear. This is because the powerline market has been fragmented and does not have a common standard. However, this is about to change.

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance announced Tuesday that an initial sponsor ballot was passed for the IEEE P1901, the working group that develops the global standard for high-speed powerline communications. This is an important step toward establishing a global standard for powerline (PLC) networking.

According to … Read more

As predicted last month, the IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard.

Finalization of the new wireless networking standard--which is capable of delivering throughput speeds up to 300 megabits per second (and even higher)--took exactly seven years from the day it was conceived, or six years from the first draft version. The standard has been through a dozen or so draft versions.

News of the ratification broke via a blog post displaying an e-mail sent by Bruce Kraemer, longtime chairman of the 802.11n Task Group, to task group members. There has been no public … Read more

A new alliance has been created to formalize information sharing on security protection and develop industry standards.

The Industry Connections Security Group (ICSG) is parked under the IEEE Standards Association and includes mostly security heavyweights and antivirus players. The founding members are AVG Technologies, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro.

Announcing the group in a blog post on Monday, Mark Harris, vice president of SophosLabs, said security researchers have had a tradition of sharing virus samples but that the sharing arrangements "are still based on individual relationships rather than formal agreements."

The formation of the group makes … Read more

Matthew Gast, a voting member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), suggested in his recent blog that the current Wireless-N (or 802.11n Draft) specification is going to be finalized in September.

If this is true, that would mean the specification took about seven years to become finalized from the day it was conceived.

So what does it mean for consumers? Apparently not much, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, the group that tests and certifies wireless networking products to ensure their interoperability.

The group announced Thursday that it will not change the baseline requirements of its 802.… Read more