IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017 - 114

Standards

CE Standards of Interest:
Wearables and Wireless TV
By Narisa N.Y. Chu and Wayne Luptow

ecent emerging technologies
related to the IEEE Consumer
Electronics Society's fields of
interest include wearables, smarthome devices, and 4K ultra-high-definition televisions (TVs) in addition to the
Internet of Things (IoT), e.g., automatic
meter readers and electric cars, among
others equipped with sensor systems.
These technologies are Internet enabled
for reaching the masses. Advances have
been accelerated and widely spread to
realize the ubiquity of the IoT sooner
rather than later.
Protocols have been established to
facilitate the IoT among many horizontal
and vertical markets. The layered structure of protocols has long been used as a
basic connectivity model, even though
some view it as an archaic approach. If
appropriately employed, it can facilitate
newly defined sublayers to harmonize
with other prevailing standards for plugand-play with futuristic or disruptive
technologies. Table 1 [1], [2] reveals a
plethora of protocols to facilitate the
much-touted IoT.
The IoT also embraces personal healthcare applications and next-generation televisions. Some research tools, for example,
the Computer Brain Interface Lab (CBILAB) as shown in Table 2 [3], [4], [7],
have been made open source to facilitate
processing consumer physiological signals. Platforms, using CBILAB as an
example, are designed to foster advanced
research. They can also be used as a
framework for standardization.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2016.2640621
Date of publication: 15 March 2017

114 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

APRIL 2017

These protocols will continue to
evolve. This "Standards" column intends
to observe and convey the development of new protocols, particularly
those that are listed below reaching the
ballot stage:
▼▼ Consumer Technology Association
(CTA) 2052.1: Definitions and Characteristics for Wearable Sleep Monitors Performance Criteria
▼▼ CTA 2056: Physical Activity Monitoring for Fitness Wearables Step
Counting
▼▼ Advanced Television Standards
Committee (ATSC) 3.0 Wireless TV
Everywhere.

WEARABLES STANDARDS
Two wearable standards have recently
been introduced: CTA-2052.1 and CTA
2056 [5], [6]. The CTA-2052.1 specification, balloted in July 2016, lays the
fundamental components for measurements about sleep and wakefulness, the
distinction between which can be easily

taken for granted. In fact, even with a
priori medical practice, it took two
years for the specification to finally be
ready for balloting. For such an extended effort regarding a rather routine
physiological phenomenon, it behooves
that electronic devices recognize the
full sleep process in detail. The longestablished medical terminology is
mapped with modern electronics measurability, enabled with wearable and
wireless capability. Excerpted from
CTA-2052.1 is Table 3, which reveals
the level of detail to be incorporated
into any standard wearable regarding
sleep soundness and uniform performance measurement.
CTA 2056 creates definitions and
performance criteria for measuring
step counting on consumer wearable or
app-based physical activity monitoring
devices. Prevote commenting period
ended on 20 August 2016. This standard describes testing configuration,
setups, and report contents, with video

Table 1. An IoT protocol stack [1], [2].
Application

CoAP, HTTP

Transport

UDP, TCP

IP/routing

IETF RPL

Adaptation

IETF 6LoWPAN ()

Medium access

IEEE802.15.4e

Physical layer

IEEE802.15.4-2006

CoAP: constrained application protocol; HTTP: hypertext transfer protocol; UDP: unidata
protocol (connectionless oriented); TCP: transport control protocols (connection oriented); IETF:
Internet Engineering Technical Forum; RPL: routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks;
6Lo: Internet protocol version 6 over low power; WPAN: wireless personal area network.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017