IEEE 802.15.4m: The first low rate wireless personal area networks operating in TV white space

This paper provides an overview on motivations and process behind the forming of the first low rate (LR) wireless personal area networks (WPAN) operating in the TV white space (TVWS), IEEE 802.15.4m. There are three main forces driving the LR-WPAN community to expand its operational band to the TVWS. First, the change in TVWS-related regulations that opens up new spectrum resources is the key triggering factor. Secondly, there are many potential applications addressed by LR-WPAN systems that are anticipated to benefit from the expansion of the spectrum. Thirdly, the emergence of multiple standardizations targeting on the same types of applications in the same conventional frequency bands, indicating potential congestion and heterogeneous coexistence issues, is also one of the main pushing factor. In this paper, a comprehensive summary of different regulations, list of potential usage models and interactions among conventional LR-WPAN system are presented. A general discussion on how these factors fall in place to realize the forming of IEEE 802.15.4m is given. Finally, the paper concludes with expected functional requirements for the IEEE 802.15.4m system.