The Internet of Things: Understanding the Core Challenges for the Gen Z and the Gen Alpha Consumer Webinar, hosted by IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) in October 2020, provided insights and views from manufacturers, system integrators, service providers, and vertical implementers of consumer IoT applications through a series of presentations from industry experts, as well as a panel discussion on data governance which I moderated. In addition, the webinar has stoked discussion within IEEE SA about possible avenues for additional open collaboration around the IoT and consumer applications.

Consumer applications are an integral part of the IEEE SA Foundational Technology Practice. Through the development of a global community of interested volunteer stakeholders, the practice helps to address core issues of TIPPSS through both foundational level horizontal standards and domain-specific standards.

A key theme for the webinar was who are Generations Z and Alpha, and what are the core challenges that these emerging generations face now and in the future when using the IoT?

Here were my key takeaways from the discussion.

Who Are Gen Z and Gen Alpha?

Gen Z, born between 1995 and 2009, are understood to be digital natives, expecting lifestyle, comfort and convenience, ease of use, and voice enablement on their connected devices, through home appliances, automation, gaming, and increasing use of augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR) across many applications. They tend to grasp the concept of security and distrust violations of privacy.

Gen Alpha, born between 2020 and 2024, are just children now. They may be currently using connected toys, geo-locators, and baby monitors, but their world will become a lot more connected through the IoT and XR/AR games.

One key issue that webinar participants discussed was that current developers are prone to thinking about users like themselves, instead of designing for the diverse breadth and depth of humanity—including Gens Z and Alpha and their unique needs and limitations.

Security Challenges and Risks

The proliferation of the IoT, with its hundreds of millions of devices, means a significant increase in security challenges from network access vulnerability. A much wider attack surface is presented by the IoT than was the case with standard networked devices. Each of the millions of smart devices—closed-circuit television (CCTV), home routers, fit bits, and even pacemakers—invites denials of service, ransomware attacks, and violations of personal and sensitive data.

Security risks for gaming include content inappropriate for children and predatory behaviour by other users. Laws are hard to enforce in the gaming world, with no good and practical solution, and technical solutions like authenticated access can be foiled when children share persistent IDs. Data anonymization just isn’t secure enough for privacy considerations, the webinar participants said, as it is easily broken through.

Overall, there is concern that security features come at a cost, which some feel challenges the manufacturers’ drive for revenue and providing a competitive product price. Very often, revenue outweighs security, leading to underdeveloped security features.

Exploring Security Solutions

Many manufacturers are recognizing the security risks introduced by the IoT and are looking into how to mitigate them. Standard techniques like authentication, authorization, accounting (AAA) in accordance with IEEE 802.1x, IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks–Port-Based Network Access Control, and increasing use of biometric recognition are popular. Some use the RFC8520 Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) standard for network access control, and there are standards in development—such as those coming out of the IEEE 2048 IEEE Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Working Group—to tackle privacy and security issues in AR/XR.

Whilst vendors must implement legislated data privacy standards and laws for personal, sensitive data—such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—they also need to look carefully at electronic signatures (“e-sign”) and other methods for obtaining user consent to use personal data.

Persistent Issues to Work Out

There are many challenges and persistent issues to work out that go beyond the vendors’ current remit. These include widening data privacy standards and laws for personal and sensitive data and how average users will maintain an IoT security framework, when the complexity of the system and the time taken to manage it may be too challenging.

Webinar participants commented that most people who have or use intelligent devices and IoT don’t think about the security risks, or even keep their systems up to date. It’s hard to enforce responsible or secure use or management of IoT or to force users to implement and then to securely and strictly maintain the manufacturer’s security framework and policy to ensure managed access control. Automation of systems, education for users and administrators, and enforcement were among the methods discussed.

IoT systems should be compared and treated like secure payment systems, the participants said. The systems should just work securely, and the user should have the minimum amount of responsibility to maintain them. There should be standards and legislation to prevent data misuse and privacy violation, and mandatory security features should be provided with “opt out” only.

Next Steps

How might the global technology community best anticipate and accommodate the IoT needs and patterns of Gens Z and Alpha and other users? IEEE SA is assembling a core team of IoT experts to focus on key considerations around consumer applications and identify potential areas for pre-standards, standards, or compliance activities. Watch the webinar recording to learn more and stay connected with ongoing developments or explore opportunities to engage.

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But almost as quickly, a hurdle to adoption began to reveal itself among a significant percent of early users: a motion sickness that seemed particular to the HMDs and their three-dimensional views. In some cases, this 3D motion sickness was severe enough that people were being turned off to using the HMDs altogether—no matter how compelling the content. It became obvious that widespread popular expansion of the technology innovation would be hindered until the industry confronted the motion-sickness problem.

Individual providers of hardware and content put in their own cycles in alleviating the issue as it pertained to their offerings. While those efforts delivered important progress and lessons learned, they also were marked by significant duplicated effort and expense, uncoordinated approaches, and uneven success.

Out of the market dilemma grew significant activity in the world’s standards development communities, and 2020 brought the approval of the first global, open standard for this space: IEEE 3079, IEEE Approved Draft Standard for Head Mounted Display (HMD) Based Virtual Reality (VR) Sickness Reduction Technology. Additional standards development work in the field is underway at the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA), with other projects sure to follow as hardware makers and content designers continue to drive toward more comfortable and compelling virtual, augmented, and reality experiences for their growing number and range of users around the world.

Landmark Standard

Why were VR users feeling sick when using HMDs when they had not reported the same illnesses when experiencing content through their computer monitors? This was the first question the industry had to address in identifying what hardware and content design adjustments could be undertaken to tackle the issue. We had to figure out why people were reacting this way.

What the industry learned was that the 3D motion sickness was being caused by a severe mismatch of information between the motion sensed by the user’s eyes and what was being sensed by the user’s inner-ear vestibular system involved with controlling balance. This was nothing new—a user having to adapt to his or her body being stationary while the visual sensor system perceived movement. The new wrinkle introduced by the 3D HMDs was the giant field of view in which a user was totally immersed. Furthermore, the discomfort could be exacerbated by factors such as image resolution, cursor delay, and content not being rendered quickly enough (for example, when a user turns her or his head from one direction to another).

Members of the IEEE 3079 Cybersickness Reduction Working Group looked at data such as a user’s visual response related to focal distortion, lens materials, lens refraction, and frame rates per second. The IEEE standard that the working group put together delivers landmark technical guidance intended to help resolve the 3D sickness problem and influence 3D content developers, service providers, HMD manufacturers, HMD-based content service providers, and 3D-display panel manufacturers in their designs.

Ongoing Collaboration

Designers across the virtual, augmented, and mixed reality industry need more reference points for content in other genres and formats, and so, related standards development continues in the IEEE 3079 working group.

IEEE P3079.1, Draft IEEE Standard for Motion to Photon (MTP) Latency in Virtual Environments, for example, is being developed to specify the requirements and test methods related to the time lapse between a user’s movement and what appears on the user’s screen and how that lag relates to motion sickness.

IEEE P3079.2, Draft IEEE Standard Mixed Reality (MR) Standard Framework for Motion Learning, is intended to help better synchronize content with devices to reduce cybersickness. For example, mechanisms to synchronize motion sensors and a projector coordinate system are being defined. Motion acquisition methods, application programming interfaces, and user interfaces are being described in the forthcoming IEEE standard.

Seeking Diverse Perspectives

The industry deemed IEEE SA to be the right venue to develop the family of standards for a number of reasons. One of the most important is that it gives the IEEE 3079 working group the freedom to bring in individual experts, as IEEE membership is not required to participate in standards development. This is important because it is not only hardware and content designers whose contributions will be needed to identify and fully address all of the aspects entailed with the cybersickness problem moving forward. For example, psychologists and doctors might have valuable input to offer to tackle some of the human factors that our industry seeks to cover in future standards.

In addition, IEEE SA offers our industry crucial connections with global expertise across an unmatched scope of technology spaces. As virtual, augmented, and mixed reality continue to pervade more and more areas of life, access to potential collaborators in other industries will grow more important to averting or assuaging cybersickness among users.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, when association with people in real spaces is limited, it’s critical that our industry works together to most efficiently forge the best possible virtual experiences. The IEEE 3079 Cybersickness Reduction Working Group welcomes your engagement in our collaborative efforts. Learn more about IEEE 3079 Draft Standard for Head Mounted Display (HMD) Based Virtual Reality (VR) Sickness Reduction Technology.

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This year IEEE has brought changes to how time within networks is synchronized with the publication of IEEE 1588-2019 Standard for a Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems.

IEEE 1588 is commonly known by the protocol that it specifies, the Precision Time Protocol (PTP), which is used to transfer time through a network. A single endpoint in the network acts as the source of time, and PTP transfers that time through various switches and routers to other endpoints so that everything in the network operates in a synchronized manner.

Why is PTP needed?

Consider the implementation of a clock in a device.

The device’s clock hardware consists of an oscillator that is specified as ticks per second, such as 100 million ticks per second (100 MHz). Software in the device reads a counter that tells it how many ticks have occurred since the oscillator was powered on. If the device has a network connection, it can receive time from another device over the network. If the devices need to synchronize time accurately, simple messages that contain the current time are insufficient because time changes as messages travel over networks. Slight operational discrepancies between oscillators can also cause times to eventually drift apart, and that drift can also be affected by environmental factors like temperature. The PTP protocol operates continuously to resolve these challenges.

IEEE 1588-2019 brings real-world benefits to academia and research institutions, world’s financial markets, the automotive and industrial automation sector, the telecom and broadcast industry, power generation and distribution companies. The standard has the potential to be further augmented and utilized to drive new and improved applications across a number of domains.

CERN and White Rabbit

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and its well-known Large Hadron Collider (LHC) uses a large Ethernet network where the required time synchronization performance is sub-nanosecond.

To meet these requirements a PTP Profile called White Rabbit was developed that specified many innovative techniques, such as enhancements for use of Ethernet hardware clocks, and calibration of asymmetry in fiber optic cabling. A PTP profile is a configuration of PTP for a specific application. The specifications from White Rabbit are incorporated into IEEE 1588-2019 as the High-Accuracy Delay Request-Response Default PTP Profile. In effect, formalizing White Rabbit as part of the IEEE 1588 standard helps to bring best-in-class performance to any application.

Telecom Internet Service

While devices are connected to the Internet using an Ethernet cable, telecom service providers also implement large Ethernet networks outside of the home or office, and similar Ethernet networks exist within 4G/5G base stations to transfer mobile phone data to and from the Internet—all of which requires time synchronization based on PTP.

Past ITU-T standards specified storage of performance statistics in logs, with local measurement in 15-minute and 24-hour periods, accessible at any time by a remote management client. While ITU-T’s past logging standards were unrelated to PTP, experts from ITU-T helped to specify this sort of logging for PTP during development of IEEE 1588-2019 resulting in the Performance Monitoring feature published within IEEE 1588-2019.

In-Vehicle Automotive and Industrial Automation

IEEE 802 is a family of standards for local area networks, such as Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) technologies. As part of that family, the IEEE 802.1 Working Group specifies a PTP Profile within IEEE 802.1AS – Timing and Synchronization for Time-Sensitive Applications. The PTP Profile in IEEE 802.1AS is well known for providing a cost and performance tradeoff that is an excellent fit for time-sensitive applications, such as the network inside a self-driving car and the network on a factory’s production floor.

For a self-driving car, devices read input data from the physical world (e.g., radar and cameras to detect objects in front of a car), perform computations on that data, and generate output back to the physical world (e.g., steer the car). These in-vehicle devices communicate over a network, and the devices must be synchronized in time, which is where IEEE 802.1AS comes in.

The factory automation example is similar. Robots on the factory floor read input data (e.g. “Is there a bottle in front of me?”), perform computations, and generate output data (e.g., fill the bottle with the factory’s sparkling water). The devices on the factory floor are networked and time synchronized, and IEEE 802.1AS fulfills their requirements.

Broadcast Television

Historically, television studios used direct audio/video cabling, but over time many studios have transitioned to use Ethernet networking. In the context of Ethernet, the audio often travels in separate messages than the video. As one would expect, time synchronization is important for these studio networks to precisely control their audio and video. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) specifies a PTP Profile for this application (ST 2059-2:2015).

Organizations like SMPTE need the ability to configure PTP in a switch using broad-based protocols like SNMP and NETCONF. As a result, the new revision IEEE 1588-2019 contains architectural changes that significantly clarify and improve the ability to configure PTP using other standards. Using IEEE 1588-2019 as a foundation, work is ongoing in SMPTE and other PTP Profile organizations to establish a clear roadmap for PTP configuration into the future.

Electrical Distribution

Power companies often use Ethernet networks for operating and managing electrical equipment. To quickly detect and mitigate electrical faults, companies use synchrophasor technology, meaning a precise measurement of the magnitude and phase angle of the sine waves found in electricity. It is important to obtain multiple synchrophasor measurements in different neighborhoods, and those measurements must be accurately synchronized in time. To achieve this the electrical power industry specifies several PTP Profiles for synchronization, one of which is the IEEE C37.238 standard .

Due to accuracy requirements, the IEEE C37.238-2011 revision specified the addition of Time Inaccuracy information. So, as PTP transfers time through the network, each Ethernet switch adds its own inaccuracy to this C37.238-specific information.

As development proceeded on the new IEEE 1588-2019 revision, other applications saw value in the work done in IEEE C37.238 on Time Inaccuracy. As a result, IEEE 1588-2019 specifies an analogous and slightly enhanced feature called Enhanced Synchronization Accuracy Metrics.

Financial Networks

Today, financial trades are often made by automated systems. Financial trading companies build out large networks that span multiple cities, and due to government regulations and other reasons, the trading actions in each city must be accurately time synchronized.

IEEE 1588-2019 specifies enhancements and clarifications for mixing multicast and unicast communication in a single PTP network. These multicast/unicast clarifications are being used for future development of a PTP Profile specifically for financial applications.

Learn More

IEEE 1588 has become a pervasive part of networking in modern times. The standard’s concept of a PTP Profile enables each application to customize the protocol to its needs. As the foundation of that PTP Profile ecosystem, the new IEEE 1588-2019 revision has been modified and enhanced to incorporate new technologies, bringing measurable benefits to our increasingly connected world.

Learn more about IEEE 1588-2019 standard or IEEE 1588 Working Group.

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The IEEE 802.11 standards family

IEEE 802.11bf

This standardization project aims to enhance the reliability and efficiency of WLAN sensing and establish interoperability of wireless devices to enable a wide range of new and useful applications.

Measurements obtained with WLAN sensing can be used to support new industrial and commercial applications in semiconductor manufacturing, enterprise networking, and test and measurement equipment. The standard will also benefit end user applications, such as home security, entertainment, energy management (HVAC, light, device power savings), home elderly care, and assisted living.

How WLAN sensing Works

IEEE 802.11bf will enable stations to inform other stations of their WLAN sensing capabilities and request and set up transmissions that allow for WLAN sensing measurements to be performed, among other features. WLAN sensing makes use of received WLAN signals to detect features of an intended target in a given environment. The technology can measure range, velocity, and angular information; detect motion, presence, or proximity; detect objects, people, and animals; and be used in rooms, houses, cars, and enterprise environments. The targeted frequency bands are between 1 GHz and 7.125 GHz (MAC/PHY service interface) and above 45 GHz (MAC/PHY).

Where previously sensors or cameras have been required for remote monitoring, WLAN sensing utilizes the devices already present on the 802.11 network in order to conduct tracking and monitoring, thus alleviating the need for specific monitoring devices. What’s more, 60 GHz 802.11 technology will provide even greater tracking and resolutions that can be leveraged for gesture recognition in gaming applications, enhanced remote health monitoring and services, and much more.

WLAN Sensing will be applicable across a number of IEEE 802.11 standard amendments operating at different frequency bands and bandwidths. The following chart maps out these applications.

Get Involved

A WLAN sensing standard is needed to fill in technical gaps in order to enhance reliability, reduce overhead, and enable new applications. This will require defining a common interface that allows for interoperability, reduces costs for stakeholders, and broadens availability to spur innovation.

The IEEE 802.11bf project was formed in September 2020 and it is expected to be completed by late 2024.

Current participants are from academic groups, research labs, and industry. The IEEE 802.11 Working Group encourages and welcomes participation in the standard development process.

In coming months, most of the discussions are expected to be centered on:

• Identification of applications.
• Discussion of models, tools, and methodology.
• Definition of functional requirements.
• High-level discussion of technical features.

Learn more about and participate in IEEE 802.11 Working Group.

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To develop meaningful interventions and strategies, it is essential to first generate a structured understanding of existing public procurement processes to identify how they can best intersect and support community needs. Cities are particularly important sites as they have become a uniquely important group of AIS clients.

As a way to address this need, IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) is collaborating on a project led by Dr. Mona Sloane of New York University and Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and Founder of Parity focused on evolving practices around procurement in AIS.  Beginning with key AIS needs of cities, the project will feature three roundtables with a public white paper that will be released in late Spring 2021.

“Responsible and ethical use of AI and machine learning technologies is of paramount importance as these technologies are more ubiquitous and influential in our daily lives,” notes Dr. Sloane. “The public sector provides a particularly sensitive and important application of data science, and we have to ensure that we can leverage public accountability to identify and mitigate harm – and procurement guidelines are a key mechanism by which this can be supported.”

The goal of the three procurement roundtables held with a group of experts from academia, business and policy is to:

• identify concrete gaps in existing procurement and development processes
• map them to the risks that will arise from widespread use of these technologies
• create a new framework for public procurement guidelines and standards for public-use data science applications

By creating a novel interdisciplinary dialogue via these roundtables, this project seeds new research on the responsible use of data science in the public interest through procurement.

The future potential of this project is significant in that it will help create a specific and scalable research agenda beyond these initial roundtables and will lay the groundwork for a potential new IEEE standard on data science and public procurement through a white paper that will be produced at the end of the project.

“This work is unique and innovative because it is harnessing the essential benefits of multi-disciplinary collaboration which is a key focus of our work at IEEE,” notes Alpesh Shah, Senior Director of Global Business Strategy & Intelligence at IEEE SA. “Consensus is critical surrounding issues of procurement and AIS, especially for cities and municipalities looking to global experts to help provide uniform definitions, standards and certifications like our ECPAIS (Ethics Certification Program for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, Ethically Aligned Design, and P7000 Standards work focused on ensuring responsible AIS design.”

“This project has the potential to be the first to set new public procurement standards that are based on a deep examination of definitions for key existing terms such as ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’, and ‘justice,’” noted Dr. Rumman Chowdhury of Parity. “We’re also excited to focus our initial research on how cities procure these technologies as cities are so immediately impactful on how AIS is adopted to directly influence a majority of the world’s population today.”

Particular focus will be placed on how these terms and associated due diligence through procurement can include marginalized populations. Lastly this work will be unique due to laying the groundwork for utilizing metrics for success of public interest technology procurement that go beyond traditional areas of risk mitigation and exponential growth, informed by the work of the IEEE 7010-2020 Standard.

Updates about this work along with the white paper generated from the workshops will be made available on an IEEE SA Website to be announced in the near future.

For more information on the project or to request a copy of the white paper, please contact Dr. Mona Sloane.

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IEEE addressed this topic during our Open Forum session “Personal Sovereignty: Digital Trust in the Algorithmic Age” at the 2020 Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which was the fifteenth annual–and first-ever entirely virtual–meeting of the IGF.

The speakers, Dr. Salma Abassi, CEO of the eWorldwide Group and John Havens, Executive Director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, were joined by moderator, Moira Patterson, Global Market Affairs and Community Engagement Director for IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA). Together with the attendees, they discussed personal data sovereignty. Topics explored in the conversation include: the balance between personal data sharing and public health, the importance of a collective effort, the role of standards in keeping humanity at the center of technology, how industry can gain customer trust, and what we as individuals can do to gain control of our data. The discussants offered several proactive measures that we could take in the face of this pressing issue.

Moira Patterson began by posing the question “Why is the emergence of data sovereignty so essential, especially in the algorithmic age?

John Havens first defined data ownership as owning the narrative and understanding particular technologies, tools, and policies. Right now other people, including advertisers and governments, know more about us than we know about ourselves, he explained. We are tracked by businesses to help us make better purchases, and by the government, to keep us safe in a pandemic–if things are working the way we want. Data tracking takes on a dangerous form when you look at how people are being bombarded and manipulated through specific channels, political or commercial, however. We do not see the physical algorithms that track our data, Havens warned, but that does not mean that they are not there.

Patterson added that there is a level of trust that exists in the physical world that can be lost in the online world, where more and more data can be used in new and potentially intrusive ways. She then asked Dr. Abassi “How do we reset and address the concerns around surveillance post-COVID-19 in the context of sovereignty, identity and data governance?”

The case of COVID-19 and data collection:
How to strike a balance between personal privacy and protection of the public

“There is conflict between how much data should be given to address the pandemic and how much data should be protected because we are moving into a very dangerous area of surveillance,’ said Dr. Salma Abassi. There has been a huge acceleration in government use of technology to support us in the response to COVID-19, through test, track, and trace systems. Some governments are abusing this power and sharing the medical status of individuals with their neighbors. The question becomes “How much surveillance is acceptable?” noted Abassi.

Policymakers also need to recognize that technology and surveillance systems are constructed by the private sector, she said, whose motives and ethics may not necessarily align with what private citizens believe to be acceptable. The situation has been further complicated by intensified data gathering, not only as a result of pandemic, but more generally the Internet boom, smartphone data gathering, and the proliferation of IoT devices, and we the citizens are unable to really understand exactly how our data is being used.

We have to begin to reset and understand what to do after the pandemic is over, she said. How do we protect ourselves and how do states actually work in this space? Abassi called for the creation of a technical task force that would examine how data is being collected and if it is being used in a transparent way.

Call for a collective effort from government, private sector, and civil society

Without the collective effort of governments, the private sector, and civil society it will be difficult to shift the power away from companies and back to the people, warned Abassi. ‘Citizens cannot own their data unless there are enforceable laws to help them.’ Abassi called for IEEE to help in this context, noting that governments cannot ask industry to set regulations for themselves. In order to increase negotiation power and build a more balanced ethical understanding of how our data is being used and manipulated,  she recommended that governments increase their collaboration with think tanks and organizations like IEEE.

Abassi called for individuals to demand their rights. She noted that AI is being used to measure trends for business, but analysis of trends in health or trends in humanitarian issues will not happen unless driven by citizens and supported by governments. One such issue is child online protection, and IEEE is an excellent forum in which to discuss the topic. The Internet Governance Forum, this one, is another.

We have to accept that, in the future, governments will need to collect more data to keep us safe, said Abassi. To build trust, governments need to set policies that allow individuals to create their own Terms of Reference outlining who is allowed to store their data, and how and when they are allowed to share the data, and when it is to be deleted.  Abassi pointed to the Government of Estonia as being the Gold Standard to look to in the future. After a huge cyber attack in 2007, the government set up strong security infrastructure, in a very transparent way. Citizens knew what data was being collected, how was it going to be used, how was it going to be protected, and which agency was going to use it.

Standards play a fundamental role in scaling solutions

Patterson pointed out that it is important to highlight the role of standards in the context of personal data sovereignty because as a standards organization, IEEE is deeply engaged, and sees the critical role that standards can play in helping to create the ecosystems and tools necessary to empower people and scale solutions. Standards are the building blocks that can help make best practices more accessible to all stakeholders.

For instance, IEEE recently approved IEEE 3527.1 Standard for Digital Intelligence (DQ), the world’s first global standard related to digital literacy, digital skills, and digital readiness. a standard to help measure and create digital literacy frameworks to help people gain the necessary digital literacy, skills, and readiness. skills. But even more fundamentally perhaps, said Patterson, human dignity needs to be at the core of our thinking. The technology should serve people and people’s needs at a basic level. Developing standards to help support that fundamental understanding will be very important.

How do we ensure trust amidst the commercialization of data

Havens discussed how companies can build trust within a model of data sovereignty. Buying data about their customers’ preferences is not only an expensive practice, but it represents a lost opportunity to build the customer’s trust. Directly asking the customer what she wants creates two-way trust. To ask, you have to build the data sovereign channels to allow your customers to speak back to you or it does not make a difference that you think you are being trustworthy. You have not empowered customers with the tools to actually answer you back.

Individuals need to do their part in creating trust

First of all, there needs to be a paradigm shift toward personal data sovereignty. We should not be made to feel guilty by others who claim that personal data sovereignty is about having something to hide, said Abassi. It is not really about hiding, but rather more a matter of being in charge of our data, being in charge of what we would like to reveal, said Havens. Second, we need to reappropriate our data and stop giving it away for free, said Abassi. We need to agree that we own our data and there is a new narrative that is set by us, she said. We have to rethink how we are going to give our data to business.

In his closing remark, Havens stated: ‘We can either be angry or we can just get the work done. The work is protecting our kids, honoring our dignity, taking all the tools that are available for advertisers and saying, “thank you for developing all of these great tools,” now we would like to use them as well.’

IEEE wants to make these ideas implementable and practical, so it is helping to create scalable solutions and roll them out broadly. So, if you are interested in helping to create new standards for personal digital sovereignty, please get in touch with us.

Learn more about IEEE’s work in promoting personal sovereignty:

• Digital Inclusion, Identity, Trust, and Agency (DIITA) Program
• The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems
• IEEE P7000 – Draft Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns During System Design

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IEEE 802.1Qcp-2018—IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks—Bridges and Bridged Networks—YANG Data Model

YANG is a formalized data modeling language that can be used by NETCONF and RESTCONF, widely accepted protocols used to simplify network configuration. Development of a YANG data model for manageable entities specified in IEEE 802.1Q leverages the flexibility and extensibility of YANG to ensure interoperability, helping to streamline industry network management practices and save on time and costs.

IEEE 802.1Qcp enables a compatible interconnection of information technology equipment attached to separate individual Local Area Networks (LANs), significantly simplifying networking management tasks. The standard amendment represented the first standards development project that addressed industry-wide recognition that YANG has emerged as the basis for ensuring interoperability for next-generation network management systems. Following those efforts, the IEEE 802.1 Working Group has been busy developing new standards and amending key IEEE 802.1 standards to incorporate YANG Data Models in response to industry demand.

New YANG Standards

IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) recently published IEEE 802.1Qcx-2020—IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks—Bridges and Bridged Networks— Amendment: YANG Data Model for Connectivity Fault Management.

IEEE 802.1Qcx-2020 provides an industry standard YANG data model for Connectivity Fault Management that can be used for Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) of IEEE 802.1TM. The standard amendment has been widely adopted and was developed with a good deal of industry and standards bodies’ participation, having been developed collaboratively with the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and leveraged by the Broadband Forum. The standard amendment also facilitates a nimble extension to support other enhanced Ethernet OAM capabilities defined by ITU-T to enhance capabilities for telecom operators deploying such things as first mile networks, cloud-based networks, or even data center interconnects, as well as supporting developers and providers of networking services and equipment.

Network security continues to be a topic of major concern. The recently published standard amendment,

defines the YANG model for Port-based network access control allowing a network administrator to restrict the use of IEEE 802 LAN service access points to secure communication between authenticated and authorized devices.

This standard is widely used in Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) networks that provide access to critical data, support mission critical applications, or that charge for service. Protocols that configure, manage, and regulate access to these networks and network-based services and applications typically run over the networks themselves. Port-based network access control regulates access to the network, guarding against transmission and reception by unidentified or unauthorized parties, and consequent network disruption, theft of service, or data loss.

Moving Forward

Automated provisioning of network systems and nodes have become the norm, and YANG has emerged as the best choice for configuration and control within all types of networks. The IEEE 802.1 Working Group is committed to facilitating the ongoing development and adoption of YANG standards and amendments.

Individuals interested in providing use cases or additional functionalities for network management support in TSN or 802.1 protocols can learn more about participating by visiting the IEEE 802.1 Working Group web page.

IEEE 802.1Qcp, IEEE 802.1Qcx and IEEE 802.1X are available for purchase at the IEEE SA Standards Store.

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The 2020 Retail Digital Transformation Grand Challenge, co-sponsored by the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA), the 3D Retail Coalition (3DRC), and Product Innovation (PI) Apparel, challenges the technology and academic community to offer up innovations and solutions to address these issues while helping build capabilities for the future of retail.

This year’s entries were asked to demonstrate the use of digital product creation technologies in advancing sustainability while reducing their environmental impact and creating value for customers. The entries were impressive, and the judges debated extensively. Among the many creative ideas we have received, we are proud to announce unspun, a pioneering apparel brand that has reinvented the conventional apparel value chain, as the winner of the competition.

Reducing Fit & Sizing Issues

Apparel and footwear account for the highest rate of eCommerce returns in the US, somewhere between 30 to 40%. The biggest reason for these returns is sizing and fit issues. Customers return products because their expectation of how a garment will fit them often does not match the actual fit. In today’s environment, 45% more people are shopping online because either the stores are closed, or they feel safer shopping from the comfort of their home. With fewer people trying on clothes in physical stores, this challenge will continue to grow.

To circumvent fit issues, unspun uses body scanning technology to map a customer’s body shape. This body scan is used to create an avatar, which is used to build a digital custom garment as per the customer’s preference. The digital garments are rendered and used to conduct a virtual fitting, ensuring that the fit is perfect before producing the physical garment. The corresponding digital 2D and 3D patterns can be used during both cut and sew production, along with unspun’s proprietary 3D weaving technology to create a zero-waste product.

Addressing Excess Inventory Issues

Circumventing the apparel industry’s overproduction and inventory management issues, unspun’s on-demand production model also means that they do not carry inventory. Each year, just in the US, unsold inventory equates to about 50 billion USD of lost revenue for apparel companies. Approximately 60% of global apparel inventory is diverted to landfill each year, representing tremendous amounts of wasted resources and 3.8 Gigatons of CO2 emissions annually.

In advancing sustainability, unspun utilizes two key metrics; CO2 emissions and the weight of waste generated through the manufacturing process. Unspun’s innovative manufacturing approach enables them to reduce their carbon footprint while maximizing profitability.

In articulating unspun’s vision for the future, co-founder Beth Esponnette mentioned that the fastest way to multiply their sustainability impact is through collaboration with established companies. unspun’s DPC solution can be leveraged by established brands to re-imagine their own supply chains to increase sustainability and profitability.

Digital Transformation in Action

The Retail Digital Transformation Grand Challenge is an IEEE SA initiative for the retail/apparel industry to explore technology applications and standards enabling next-generation consumer experiences. The project originated with the IEEE SA Industry Connections (IC) 3D Body Processing (3DBP) program, a collaborative effort to assess standards opportunities intersecting emerging technologies to enhance industries such as retail, medical, health and wellness, and sports and athletics. Participation in 3DBP subgroups and activities are welcomed.

Learn more about the Retail Digital Transformation Grand Challenge and IEEE SA Industry Connections (IC) Program 3D Body Processing.

The post Announcing the Winner of 2020 Retail Digital Transformation Grand Challenge appeared first on IEEE SA Beyond Standards.

From Technological Innovation to Societal Shift

The IEEE Digital Transformation Working Group’s new, approved standards project—IEEE P2023—Standard for Digital Transformation Architecture and Framework—aims to take digital transformation to the next level.  And, while it’s understood that there are many benefits for enterprises embracing digital transformation, it reaches far beyond just the associated technologies, representing a digitally enabled cultural shift that will transform and reimagine commerce, government, and society in general.

A good example of a societal shift, albeit brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, is the digitally-enabled education programs enacted for virtual learning environments worldwide. In fact, for those institutions and students able to leverage digital technologies, many are finding the virtual nature of online education to be a broader and more rewarding experience than that of the traditional classroom environment, allowing them to connect with peers around the world and to explore a more vibrant overall curriculum.

IEEE P2023 covers a wide range of technologies and technology standards under the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) umbrella. The project will also study how different industry segments will be transformed, as well as address how work is being conducted, bringing in things like Agile and the disruption of hierarchies, helping to redefine the fundamental nature of how people interact, communicate and make decisions. In effect, digital transformation is totally changing the whole idea of control and communication. The result being a better enabled and informed workforce in real time that can pursue new approaches to business models and innovate in ways previously not possible.

Providing Architecture and Framework for Digital Transformation

The goal of IEEE P2023 is to provide an architecture and framework for digital transformation development, usage, implementation and interfaces for applications. The architecture and framework addresses scalability, systems and interfaces, security and privacy challenges for digital transformation applications. The resulting standard will allow companies and organizations to provide better support across a much wider base of operation and locations for more people. It will further provide integration between software and hardware such that different industries and systems applications can exchange data and provide the basis for new growth.

The architecture of the IEEE P2023 standard will be based upon the digital technologies that are associated with Digital Transformation:

• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning
• Big Data
• Digital Twins
• Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality/Extended Reality
• Blockchain

Additional technologies will be included as development of the standard progresses. Likely areas for additional technology would include networking, communication, and security.

Based on industry assessments of the impact of digital transformation on industry dynamics, the standard framework will be built upon Standard Industry Classification (SIC) codes and will reference applicable industry standards:

• Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
• Mining
• Construction
• Manufacturing
• Transportation, Communications, Electric, Gas and Sanitary service
• Wholesale Trade
• Retail Trade
• Finance, Insurance and Real Estate
• Services
• Public Administration

Get Involved in Advancing Digital Transformation Ecosystem

The digital transformation market, projected to reach $1009.8 billion by 2025, finds IEEE in a unique position to work on standards development defining how data is collected and processed. IEEE P2023 represents a starting point for digital transformation activities that will foster increased integration and utilization of advanced computer technology.

It’s become clear that we are moving to a new and expanding era of digital transformation. While digital transformation is a top priority for businesses, becoming a digital enterprise is no small undertaking as it requires comprehensive, systemic change.

Building upon its efforts to advance the digital transformation ecosystem, the IEEE Digital Transformation Working Group was recently granted a charter from IEEE SA to establish a Digital Transformation Association. A new website will be established in 2021, where members can gather to share information and best practices and have access to online resources and workshops.

IEEE P2023 is an entity-based project and welcomes IEEE SA Corporate Members to participate.  Learn more about the standard project and the working group.

The post IEEE P2023 Standard Taking Digital Transformation to New Levels appeared first on IEEE SA Beyond Standards.

The IEEE 802.1 Working Group recently completed work on IEEE 802.1AS-2020 – Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks–Timing and Synchronization for Time-Sensitive Applications, which includes features of the also recently completed IEEE 1588-2019 Precision Time Protocol (PTP). Prior to publication of the original IEEE 802.1AS standard, IEEE 1588 was used for transport of precise time in local area networks. That said, the specification of time transport in the original IEEE 802.1AS and the new features of IEEE 802.1AS-2020 will allow applications in the industrial automation and automotive sectors to use IEEE 802-based synchronization with convergence to a single standard.

The recent release of IEEE 802.1AS-2020 builds upon IEEE 802.1AS-2011, originally developed to support plug-and-play audio and video applications. In fact, IEEE 802.1AS-2020 represents a significant standard revision that also addresses 5G integration requirements, while maintaining backward capabilities with the original standard.

New Feature Benefits

Although IEEE 802.1AS is based on IEEE 1588, the requirements in IEEE 802.1AS-2011 focused on two aspects that are very important for local area network applications:

• Increased Cost Savings: Use of a free-running clock allows for use of low-cost oscillators that are common in networks for applications such as industrial automation and automotive in-vehicle.
• Improved Reliability: The IEEE 802.1AS protocol uses mechanisms to validate that all devices in a network operate the protocol. For example, if an Ethernet switch is detected and found to not operate IEEE 802.1AS, that switch is excluded from transporting time. This provides consistent performance, which is essential to many local area network applications.

IEEE 802.1AS-2020 builds upon IEEE 802.1AS-2011 by adding:

• Transport over IEEE 802.11 links that use the fine timing measurement (FTM) protocol, which allows for better time accuracy than the timing measurement (TM) protocol of IEEE 802.11 used in IEEE 802.1AS-2011
• Multiple domains that are needed:
  • for professional audio/video and newer industrial and automotive applications to help facilitate fault tolerance and redundancy
  • to allow both working clock and global time for industrial applications
• Improved facility to detect the presence of devices not compliant to IEEE 802.1AS-2020 and/or IEEE 802.1AS-2011, eliminating the use of these devices for timing transport
• Inclusion in the PTP profile of the new Common Mean Link Delay Service of IEEE 1588-2019, which allows a single PTP link delay measurement to be made for use by all PTP domains.

All of the above features were developed while satisfying the requirements for IEEE 1588 profiles. The collaboration on the development of IEEE 802.1AS-2020 and IEEE 1588-2019 helped to ensure consistency between the two newly revised standards. This included facilitating the inclusion in IEEE 1588-2019 of the measurement of frequency offset relative to the grandmaster by accumulation of neighbor frequency offsets and the media-independent/media-dependent layer architecture. It also led to the development of the Common Mean Link Delay Service feature of IEEE 1588-2019.  This feature was initially identified as a requirement for IEEE 802.1AS-2020; however, it was felt other PTP profiles might benefit from it, as well.

Expanded Applications

Due to the relevance of IEEE 802.1AS to many local area network applications, work is in progress to standardize use of IEEE 802.1AS in new markets:

• Industrial automation: IEEE 802.1AS is specified as a requirement for time synchronization in drafts of IEC/IEEE 60802, TSN Profile for Industrial Automation.
• Automotive in-vehicle: IEEE 802.1AS is specified as a requirement for time synchronization in drafts of IEEE P802.1DG, TSN Profile for Automotive In-vehicle Ethernet Communications.
• 5G: For integration of the 5G System into industrial automation applications, IEEE 802.1AS is specified as a requirement in specifications for 5G technology in 3GPP.

Initially driven by the industrial automation and in-vehicle network communication, and the deployment of 5G, TSN is growing in importance and demand and will continue to spark innovation in new markets. The IEEE 802.1 Working Group remains committed to supporting new beneficial applications through the development of new standards and revision to existing ones. Already, new work on an amendment to IEEE 802.1AS-2020 has begun to specify hot-standby as an option for improved fault tolerance and redundancy.

Learn more about IEEE 802.1AS-2020 or purchase the standard.

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