The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has formed an interest group to explore the use of the 60 GHz band for wireless personal area networks (WPAN), which generally have a range of 10 m. This little used, 7 GHz-wide portion of the radio spectrum (as defined in FCC 47 CFR 15.255) avoids interference with nearly all electronic devices, given the high attenuation of these wavelengths by walls and floors, and promises to allow more WPANs to occupy the same building. The IEEE 802.15.3™ Millimeter Wave Interest Group (mmWIG) was formed in July 2003 as part of an effort to develop a millimeter-wave-based alternative physical layer (PHY) for the IEEE high rate WPAN standard, IEEE 802.15.3™ 2003. Interest groups are the first step in the creation of a standard. The initial meeting of the IEEE mmWIG was held in Singapore in September. A future meeting is scheduled for 12 to 16 January 2004 in Vancouver, BC, Canada (see http://www.ieee802.org/meeting/). Anyone who is interested in helping open the milli-meter band for use in WPANs is invited to join the interest group.


The group has issued a call for papers for its upcoming meetings to help lay the groundwork for a millimeter-wave-based standard. Papers from industry, academia, regulatory bodies and other sources should describe original work related to the use of the 60 GHz band in WPANs in such areas as:

• Mobile and networked applications
• Network protocol and performance
• Mobile and ad-hoc networking
• Mobile and ubiquitous systems
• Network security
• Internet computing
• Wireless networks
• Multimedia distribution
• Last-mile applications

Five contributed papers were presented at the group’s first meeting. These concerned: Japanese regulation for the 60 GHz band; mmW frequency allocation in Europe; a proposed mmW WPAN concept; proposed technical requirements for mmW WPANs; and mmW propagation modeling for WPANs. Papers for upcoming meetings of the IEEE mmW Interest Group should be sent electronically to either Reed Fisher, who chairs this group reedfisher@juno.com), or to Robert F. Heile of the IEEE 802.15 Working Group (bheile@ieee.org). Papers should follow the IEEE 802.15 template (see http://ieee802.org/15/pub/submission.htm). For more information on the IEEE 802.15 Working Group and the IEEE mmW Interest Group, visit http://ieee802.org/15/.