NIST Smart Connected Systems Newsletter – December 2021

IEEE Approves Cloud Computing Standard, Aided by NIST

NIST Proposes Operating Envelope Specification Concept to Support Automated Driving Safety

NIST Supports Teleoperation Forum on Concepts and Standardization

NIST-led IEEE Working Group Pursues Radio Channel Standard for Wireless Industry

NIST and University Researchers Offer Future 6G Network Concept

University Researchers Use NIST Report to Pursue Clearer CPS and IOT Definitions

NIST Researchers Collaborate Internationally on Time Synchronization Approach for IoT

IEEE Approves Cloud Computing Standard, Aided by NIST

On December 8, 2021, the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board approved the IEEE 2302-2021 

Standard for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation produced by IEEE's P2302 Working Group 

(chaired by NIST's Robert Bohn), following the IEEE's Standards Review Committee recommended 

approval. The standard is also based on the NIST Special Publication 500-332 The NIST Cloud Federation 

Reference Architecture and NIST research.
To date, the interoperability of cloud services has been a challenge for providers and customers. 

Consequently, cloud services were limited in geographic coverage, functionality, and scalability. Cloud 

computing incompatibilities are analogous to the early days of the telephone and the Internet. 

The IEEE standard represents a major advance for cloud computing – or computing on demand –

enabling greater interoperability. It defines a functional model for a cloud federation and addresses the 

following: 

• Topology, which defines its clouds, exchanges, and gateways

• Functional elements, which include messaging, resource ontologies, and trust infrastructure

• Governance elements – its registration, geo-independence, trust anchor, compliance, and audit

The intended technical benefit of the standard is to enable a dynamic infrastructure that can support 

evolving business models, and ultimately facilitate the growth of cloud computing.

NIST Proposes Operating Envelope Specification Concept to Support Automated Driving Safety

NIST released its Special Publication 1900-301, Automated Driving System Safety Measurement Part I: 

Operating Envelope Specification. It presents a novel approach to automated driving systems (ADS) 

safety measurement. 
SAE International defines an automated vehicle as being a vehicle equipped with an ADS. The NIST 

approach to measuring automated vehicle safety builds on the operational design domain (ODD), or 

operating conditions for which ADS is designed to function. The ODD for an automated vehicle was 

originally proposed by the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership. The ODD is now broadly accepted by 

industry and government as a taxonomy for original equipment manufacturers to express the design 

intent for vehicle automation.

NIST introduces the concept of an operating envelope specification (OES), a structured description of the 

operating environment for driving. The OES supports calculation-based reasoning for vehicle 

performance in that environment, with testing and certification applications and in real-time driving.

A diverse group of stakeholders can benefit from OES, including developers, technology suppliers, and 

safety assessors. Infrastructure designers, as well as owners and operators of ADS-equipped vehicles, 

also can use OES to determine whether operating conditions are suitable for safe automated vehicle 

operation. Additionally, teleoperators can use OES data to support remote driving or remote assistance. 

Finally, the automated vehicle itself will need access to OES information to understand and respond 

safely to its environment. Reliable safety assessment methods can contribute to public acceptance of 

automated vehicles.

The NIST approach resulted from an open stakeholder engagement process in the NIST ADS Safety 

Measurement Technical Working Group, which was initiated based on stakeholder input at the NIST 

workshop on Consensus Safety Measurement Methodologies for Automated Driving System-Equipped 

Vehicles and open to all interested parties, including manufacturing, transportation, research and 

development, government, and roadway design participants. The approach also leverages the NIST 
Cyber-Physical System Framework, which describes the engineering concerns of system stakeholders, 

including trustworthiness, and how they are addressed in component, subsystem and full system 

development.

Ongoing work at NIST, with its industry, government, and academic partners, will build on OES to 

characterize safety metrics for automated vehicle maneuvers and overall performance.

NIST Supports Teleoperation Forum on Concepts and Standardization 

On December 2, 2021, over 180 experts from around the world participated in the first 5G-Blueprint 

Forum on Teleoperation, organized by 5G-Blueprint Project, the Teleoperation Consortium, and NIST. 

The Forum addressed approaches and concepts for remotely operating different types of vehicles.

NIST's Tao Zhang contributed to the panel on legal, regulatory, and standardization aspects of 

teleoperation, along with Scott McCormack (Teleoperation Consortium); Michael Fernandez-Ferri 

(Greggo Networks); Mathijs Klepper (KPN); Gino Ducheyne (Belgian Institute for Postal Service and 

Telecommunication); and Yunpeng Zang (Ericsson).

A key issue identified in the Forum was the relationship between autonomous vehicles and teleoperated 

mobility. Zhang stated that the two are intrinsically integrated. Today, human teleoperators can help 

self-driving vehicles navigate situations the vehicles cannot handle on their own. Over time, increasingly

automated teleoperation can provide additional ways to achieve driving automation beyond putting all 

driving intelligence on the vehicle. Zhang also noted several teleoperation topics of industry interest that 

could benefit from standardization, including:

• Taxonomy for teleoperation 
• Matrix characterizing the safety of teleoperation

• Operational design domains for teleoperation 

• Interfaces for the teleoperation system and the vehicle

• Interfaces for vehicle passengers interacting with the teleoperation system

Zhang emphasized the need to examine teleoperation applications. They should be considered along 

with network requirements. No matter how well a wireless network is designed, its performance can 

fluctuate due to many factors such as physical environments and network congestion. Therefore, it is 

important to consider what teleoperation applications can do to enable the safety of remotely operated 

vehicles under poor network conditions. The more the applications can do, the less stringent 

requirements they will require the network to meet.

NIST-led IEEE Working Group Pursues Radio Channel Standard for Wireless Industry

On November 16, 2021, IEEE initiated the IEEE P1451.5p working group, chaired by NIST's Rick Candell 

and assisted by NIST's Kang Lee and Karl Montgomery. The working group seeks to produce a standard 

that specifies the radio frequency environment characteristics and configuration for performance 

evaluation of industrial wireless network designs, before commissioned deployment in industrial and 

mission-critical settings. This standard will include a model that represents the radio frequency 

environment and will account for factors (aggressors) degrading the performance of radio channels, 

such as jamming and interference, competing for traffic overlays, and multi-path. The standard will 

include profiles that address levels of severity and the unique radio channel challenges of different 

industries and application scenarios.

Research and standardization to be conducted under this working group were requested by industry at 

the Workshop on Performance of Industrial Wireless Mechatronics Systems on June 8, 2021, at the IEEE 

Industrial Electronics Society’s International Conference on Factory Communication Systems. 
The IEEE P1451.5p standard is seen as significantly benefiting industry by advancing confidence in the 

use of wireless technologies for applications in the Industrial Internet of Things, from sensing and 

actuating to automation and real-time control. This standard also would enable important concepts of 

smart manufacturing such as mobility of actors, factory agility, flexibility of factory configuration and 

deployment, and simplicity of maintenance. Smart manufacturing is seen as more efficient than presentday manufacturing practices. Additionally, the use of wireless technologies would reduce cabling and 

thus cut costs, as well as allow more mobile and reconfigurable networks. Verification of wireless 

network performance on the factory floor is an essential part of the industrial wireless deployment 

lifecycle (See NIST AMS 300-4 Guide to Industrial Wireless Systems Deployments) for which 

standardization in test configuration plays a crucial part.

NIST and University Researchers Offer Future 6G Network Concept 

In 6G Cognitive Information Theory: A Mailbox Perspective, published in MDPI, October 16, 2021, NIST 

and international researchers propose a "cognitive" 6G network – significantly enhancing the 5G 

network which encodes and transmits data with their meaning or semantics. 

With commercial 5G rapidly deploying, researchers have begun to look at 6G. Its key technologies for 

mobile communication networks are expected to become available as early as 2023, with 6G networks 

emerging in 2030, according to Saad et al. Compared to 5G, the 6G network will increase data rates by 

over 100 times, to one TeraByte per second or more, enabling the inclusion of edge intelligent devices 

and computing. To move large amounts of data to where and when it is needed, 6G networks will need 

to customize services to meet demands, transmit valued data, and interact with users.
To meet these requirements, the paper offers a "mailbox theory" which envisions a 6G network 

characterized as a: 

• Distributed Intelligent Network: This would have intelligent applications embedded throughout the 

network and be intelligent, managed and controlled. The network would be capable of transmission, 

storage, analysis of large-scale data, and providing personalized access at any time and place. 

• Proactive Interactive Network: This would be a personalized, demand-centered network. Users 

would define network functions for on-demand resource scheduling. Moreover, the network would 

adjust in real time according to changes in user demand. Such a design requires artificial intelligence 

to adjust the network as well as protection for personal data. 

• Cognitive Information Transmission: Compared to traditional communications, the 6G network 

would significantly reduce redundant transmissions and better ensure semantic meanings are 

mined, extracted, and sent.

University Researchers Use NIST Report to Pursue Clearer CPS and IOT Definitions

In The 12 Flavors of Cyberphysical Systems in the December 2021 issue of IEEE’s Computer, Pennsylvania 

State University's Joanna F. DeFranco and University of Patras' Dimitrios Serpanos seek to define cyberphysical systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT). They build on NIST's Special Publication 1900-

202 on Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things, which addresses the implications of a unified 

CPS/IoT perspective. The pursuit of definitions is intended to eliminate confusion regarding the subjects

and focus future research. 

The researchers evaluated 12 definitions of CPS from Department of Homeland Security, Department of 

Transportation, Cyber-Physical Systems Virtual Organization, IEEE, National Science Foundation, and 
NASA. The researchers then compared these definitions to six characteristics of CPS, as described by the 

NIST publication. Overall, researchers found many CPS definitions addressed NIST's CPS characteristics, 

but still missed one or more. 

The researchers said that CPS and IoT technologies are related but that there continues to be a lack of 

consensus among other researchers regarding similarities, differences and relationships, and a lack of 

consistency in their respective definitions. Their finding is similar to that of the NIST publication, which,

based on an analysis of the literature, found four schools of thought regarding CPS versus IoT: 

equivalency, partial overlap, CPS as a subset of IoT, and IoT as a subset of CPS. The article seeks to 

provoke discussions regarding these concepts, leading to clear definitions.

NIST Researchers Collaborate Internationally on Time Synchronization Approach for IoT

Time synchronization of sensor networks is critical to the Internet of Things (IoT). These sensor networks

must provide real-time data in monitoring and controlling physical infrastructures. This entails 

forwarding sensor data and data fusion results to the cloud and sharing data with IoT applications – and 

all of the IoT devices should be synchronized based on a common time base. However, most IoT devices,

such as IoT wireless sensors and actuators using microcontrollers, do not have real-time clock modules.

NIST researchers (Eugene Song, Kang Lee) and other IEEE members recently presented and published 

Time Synchronization of IEEE P1451.0 and P1451.1.6 Standard-based Sensor Networks as part of the 

IECON 2021 conference. It introduces time synchronization approaches for IoT sensor networks, which 

are based on the IEEE P1451.0 standard. The proposed architecture consists of two-level timesynchronization systems for: 

• Wide-area networks (WANs), based on IEEE P1451.0 and P1451.1.X standards

• Wireless local area networks (LANs), based on IEEE P1451.0 and P1451.5.X standards

The paper focuses on the time synchronization of WANs based on IEEE P1451.0 and P1451.1.6 

standards. The paper also provides the implementation of time-synchronization for wireline and 

wireless networks adhering to IEEE P1451.0 and P1451.1.6 standards, along with preliminary results 

from verifying the approach.