Thread Group has released its latest specification, and the new Thread 1.2 networking protocol focuses on improving battery performance as well as enabling large-scale internet of things deployments in commercial and public buildings.
IoT, Thread Group said in a statement, has been “constrained by fragmented technologies, concerns about security, and limits to the number of devices that can connect to one network.” The new spec aims to address those issues, as well as security concerns.
“No one has deployed an IP-based, secure and low-power wireless networking protocol with the same level of scale and functionality as the Thread 1.2 Networking Protocol,” said Grant Erickson, president of Thread Group. He said that the Thread 1.2 release “has far lower power requirements relative to comparable solutions, thus improving the battery life of IoT devices.”
Thread is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 radio standard and uses the IPv6 protocol. In a recent blog entry by Jorg Kennis and Jos Bruins of the OSRAM Standardization Office, the two authors said that the new spec’s commercial extensions make “important improvements to the commissioning process, the number of devices able to connect on a network, and the way these networks are configured and managed.
That includes the ability to support much larger-scale networks for use cases such as office buildings or public buildings, hotels or other commercial buildings, the two wrote. “The specification now more easily allows thousands of devices in one deployment, which can be configured manually, autonomously and via advanced remote commissioning features,” they said.
The release includes optional Bluetooth Low Energy Extensions that “expand IP connectivity and end-to-end security for Bluetooth Low Energy devices, such as smartphones,” Thread Group said, and it also standardizes out-of-band Thread commissioning over Bluetooth as well as enabling devices that only have a BLE radio to be a “native part” of a Thread mesh network.
