The charter of IEEE Communications Society Standardization Program Development Board (CSPDB) includes:

  • Identifying novel high-risk/high-payoff ideas
  • Nurturing selected ideas towards pre-standardization maturity
  • Allocating resources for Vision and Research Projects to advance such ideas
  • Understanding and disseminating the essence of innovation
  • Establishing journals and conferences related to innovation

To participate, join the CSPDB email list. A wiki is also open for user input.

See “LET US KNOW HOW WE CAN HELP YOU” for more detail.

Submit a Project Request Form for a new idea.

Example of Current Activities

Industry Impact Factor

The CSPDB is developing an “Industry Impact Factor” for use in understanding and determining successful innovation.

Motivation: There is no reliable, objective metric for how publications impact industry and society. There are various types of impact factors; however, they tend to be skewed towards citations in the academic realm rather than impact upon real world technologies, industry, and society. The industry impact factor should measure to what extent a publication has an actual benefit to real technologies, industry, and thus society in general.

Benefits include:

  1. Help researchers better understand results that actually benefit society and improve research in general
  2. Help identify and distinguish innovation and where it originates in order to encourage it
  3. Track publications that have been found to be of actual benefit to society
  4. Help the IEEE better track and encourage research that impacts revenue for the IEEE
  5. Help the IEEE demonstrate its impact on society (beyond just academic output)

Example: The actual metric is being defined; however, it would likely take into account references by:

  1. Standards
  2. Patents
  3. References by industry authors
  4. Count of publications used by industry

The metric should represent ideas that have been proven to benefit technology and industry because they are actually used to benefit society.

The Industry Impact Factor will have wide-spread use in determining innovation and as a measure of productive research versus paper-generation.

Software Defined Networking

The CSPDB has received a recent request for a potential standards research project for Software Defined Networking (SDN). This could lead to a Vision or Research Project on the topic.

Best Readings on Innovation

“Best Readings” are a refined list of the best publications on a particular topic presented on the ComSoc website. In this case, the CSPDB is considering a Best Readings on the topic of innovation and standards.

We would like to begin the process of putting together a “Best Readings” similar (but probably less extensive) to what was done for PLC: http://www.comsoc.org/best-readings/powerline-communications.

Ideally there should only be a few papers that best define the topic and describe its breadth of for now (tutorial in nature). The goal is to clearly define the topic and make it accessible rather than burying it in details with hundreds of papers.

A committee will need to be chosen to select the “Best Papers.” Here’s a simple suggested set of criteria (to be refined):

  1. Provides solid definition and complete coverage of the topic (50%)
  2. Clarity and ease of understanding (35%)
  3. Citations and supporting evidence (15%)

Future Directions for Nanonetworking

Within the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA), the “Future Directions for Nanonetworking” (FDfN) activity will be overseen by the IEEE-SA Board of Governors (BOG) and the IEEE Communications Society Standards Committee. The charter of FDfN focuses its activities as follows:

  • This project will consider two important aspects of future directions in nanonetworking: first, emerging trends and important open problems; and second, industrial applications and potential industrial partners.
  • The first part of the project:
    • Will evaluate, in as much detail as possible, the current state of the art in nanonetworking research, and will identify themes that currently occupy the attention of researchers;
    • Will consider gaps in current research, both theoretical and practical:
      • Concerning gaps in theoretical knowledge, the project will consider research areas such as (but not be limited to) mathematically realistic communication channel models, relationships to concepts from conventional communication systems, and interfacing across multiple layers and scales
      • Concerning gaps in practical knowledge, the focus will be on requirements for implementation of nanonetworking systems in laboratory environments (as opposed to simulation).
    • Will develop a plan for approaching potential funding partners (e.g., NSF, DARPA, NIH, NSERC, CIHR) to address these gaps in research; and
    • Will consider expertise to address the gaps that lie outside the traditional domain of the IEEE (e.g., biology, chemistry, materials science), and will develop a plan to enhance collaborations with researchers from those disciplines.
  • The second part of the project:
    • Will explore industrial applications of nanonetworking, especially those applications that are feasible and achievable at present (or in the near term), but also visionary/transformative future applications;
    • Will consider possible commercial products that use nanonetworking, and make the business case for those products;
    • Will identify companies that could produce nanonetworking-related products or exploit nanonetworking in an industrial context; and
    • Will propose next steps towards involving those companies in collaborative research and development, including involvement in university research.
  • Together, both parts of the project will explore the potential for research partnerships, e.g., industrial/academic partnerships.
  • Although this project is intended to support future standardization activities, work that is already part of the 1906.1 PAR is outside the scope of this project.

See instructions here: https://mentor.ieee.org/1906.1/bp/StartPage.

Smart Grid Communications Vision Project

The Smart Grid Communications Vision Project is publishing a book on a Smart Grid Communications 2030 Vision, including a roadmap and reference architecture. The book is nearly complete and the roadmap is being developed. The roadmap should be in the form of a simple brochure that highlights the novel ideas in the book.

Innovation and Standards in Information and Communication Technologies (ISICT)

IEEE ComSoc’s Emerging Technologies Committee has approved the subcommittee on “Innovation and Standards in Information and Communication Technologies (ISICT).”