Geoff Mulligan is an American computer scientist who developed embedded internet technology and 6LoWPAN. [1] [2] He was chairman of the LoRa Alliance from its creation in 2015 until 2018, was previously founder and chairman of the IPSO Alliance, [3] is a consultant on the Internet of Things, and in 2013, was appointed a Presidential Innovation Fellow. [4]
Raised in Palo Alto, California, Mulligan attended Henry M. Gunn High School. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in computer science [5] and a Master Of Science (M.S.) from the University of Denver. [6]
While in the Air Force, he worked on the ARPAnet. [7] The ARPAnet evolved into the Defense Data Network, where he worked on security and performance and also designed and directed installation of the Pentagon data networks that used cable TV technology. [3]
Mulligan returned to the Air Force Academy, where he oversaw the design and installation of the Academy's local area network, FALCONnet. [6]
In 1990, Mulligan joined Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto. [6] He focused on network security, electronic mail, TCP/IP networking, networking tools and firewall technology. He worked on the DEC SEAL firewall, [8] and on the IPv6 protocol working group. [9]
Mulligan began working at Sun Microsystems in 1992. [5] He developed and maintained the Solaris TCP/IP utilities and kernel. [5] He also worked on Sun's wide area network and firewall complex. He continued with the IPv6 design team and wrote a PC-based implementation, called N6AFV, along with a packet decoder, and worked on the development of an IPv4/IPv6 border gateway. He was the principal architect of Sun's firewall product, Sunscreen SPF 100. [10]
Mulligan further developed Sunscreen, adding network address translation, an internal Java interpreter and topology hiding technologies. [11] In 1997, he created HZ.COM, an electronic mail information retrieval system for two-way pagers and early cellular phones. When the HZ.COM domain was hijacked in 2002, the incident was featured in the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Security and Stability Advisory Committee's report of 2005. [12] He took a sabbatical from Sun to start USA.net, one of the first e-mail outsourcing providers. He left Sun to co-found Geocast Network Systems, [13] where he was responsible for operating system design and support, as well as network architecture for the evolving Internet multicast communication technology that the company was developing. [14] Following Geocast, Mulligan co-founded Interosa as chief technology officer and, subsequently, chief executive. Interosa was building a new policy-based privacy technology for digital content and an email privacy system [15] that was based on their new technology. [16] The company was shut down in November 2000. [17]
In 2001, Mulligan was hired by Invensys as the chief scientist for the Home Controls Division, where he worked on resource and energy management technology, including home gateway design and development, web-based tools, and low-power, low-speed, low-cost wireless networks such as the IEEE 802.15 standards marketed with the Zigbee trademark. Invensys worked on a project to put wireless IPv6 communications in smoke alarms and appliances. [18]
He was one of the founding board members of the Zigbee Alliance [19] and was co-chair of the 6LoWPAN Working Group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). [20] He was instrumental in the design of the IPv6 protocol and created and named 6LoWPAN. [3] In 2006, he started the firm Proto6, consulting for companies and the US Department of Defense. Mulligan worked with others to launch the Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance in 2008.
In June 2013, Mulligan became one of the second round of Presidential Innovation Fellows, working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [4] [21] and was co-creator of the White House's SmartAmerica Challenge. [22] He is currently serving as the US representative to the ISO Strategic Advisory Group on Smart and Sustainable Cities and is also currently serving as the Chairman of the LoRa Alliance and on the Board of Directors for the IPSO Alliance. [3]
Mulligan holds over 15 patents in computer security, networking and electronic mail. [3] In 1999 he wrote Removing the Spam: Email Processing and Filtering. [23] The book explains the operation and management of two widely distributed Unix e-mail tools: Sendmail and Procmail.
In 1997, Mulligan testified before Congress on electronic commerce and computer security. The Committee on Science held a briefing on Secure Communications in February, the second in a series of briefings on computer security. The theme of the briefing was the need to protect the confidential nature of private communications and to ensure that stored proprietary data remains uncompromised. [24] He spoke on "Security Through Containment", and explained how networks are designed and built to facilitate the sharing and distribution of data and information, while the goal of security is to limit and control the distribution of information. One method for providing both connectivity and security is through the use of containment. [25]
IEEE 802.15 is a working group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) IEEE 802 standards committee which specifies wireless personal area network (WPAN) standards. There are 10 major areas of development, not all of which are active.
A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network for interconnecting electronic devices within an individual person's workspace. A PAN provides data transmission among devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets and personal digital assistants. PANs can be used for communication among the personal devices themselves, or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet where one master device takes up the role as gateway.
Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and other low-power low-bandwidth needs, designed for small scale projects which need wireless connection. Hence, Zigbee is a low-power, low data rate, and close proximity wireless ad hoc network.
IEEE 802.15.4 is a technical standard which defines the operation of a low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN). It specifies the physical layer and media access control for LR-WPANs, and is maintained by the IEEE 802.15 working group, which defined the standard in 2003. It is the basis for the Zigbee, ISA100.11a, WirelessHART, MiWi, 6LoWPAN, Thread and SNAP specifications, each of which further extends the standard by developing the upper layers which are not defined in IEEE 802.15.4. In particular, 6LoWPAN defines a binding for the IPv6 version of the Internet Protocol (IP) over WPANs, and is itself used by upper layers like Thread.
Contiki is an operating system for networked, memory-constrained systems with a focus on low-power wireless Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Extant uses for Contiki include systems for street lighting, sound monitoring for smart cities, radiation monitoring, and alarms. It is open-source software released under the BSD-3-Clause license.
6LoWPAN was a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It was created with the intention of applying the Internet Protocol (IP) even to the smallest devices, enabling low-power devices with limited processing capabilities to participate in the Internet of Things.
In digital communications, chirp spread spectrum (CSS) is a spread spectrum technique that uses wideband linear frequency modulated chirp pulses to encode information. A chirp is a sinusoidal signal whose frequency increases or decreases over time.
MiWi is a proprietary wireless protocol supporting peer-to-peer, star network connectivity. It was designed by Microchip Technology. MiWi uses small, low-power digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, and is designed for low-power, cost-constrained networks, such as industrial monitoring and control, home and building automation, remote control, wireless sensors, lighting control, and automated meter reading.
The Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance was an international technical standards organization promoting the Internet Protocol (IP) for what it calls "smart object" communications. The IPSO Alliance was a non-profit organization founded in 2008 with members from technology, communications and energy companies. The Alliance advocated for IP networked devices in energy, consumer, healthcare, and industrial uses. On 27 March 2018, the IPSO Alliance merged with the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) to form OMA SpecWorks.
Silicon Laboratories, Inc. is a fabless global technology company that designs and manufactures semiconductors, other silicon devices and software, which it sells to electronics design engineers and manufacturers in Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure worldwide.
OSIAN, or Open Source IPv6 Automation Network, is a free and open-source implementation of IPv6 networking for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). OSIAN extends TinyOS, which started as a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley in co-operation with Intel Research and Crossbow Technology, and has since grown to be an international consortium, the TinyOS Alliance. OSIAN brings direct Internet-connectivity to smartdust technology.
Nivis, LLC is a company that designs and manufactures wireless sensor networks for smart grid and industrial process automation. Target applications include process monitoring, environmental monitoring, power management, security, and the internet of things. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with additional offices in Romania, where much of its technology is developed. The company's product portfolio consists of standards-based wireless communications systems, including radio nodes, routers, management software and a software stack for native communications. Nivis hardware is operated by open source software.
Paradox Engineering SA is a Swiss technology company that designs and markets solutions and services enabling smart cities and Industry 4.0 applications. The company's mission is to offer technologies to unlock the value of data. Its solutions are ready for the Internet of things, and enable cities and companies to collect, transport, store and deliver any kind of data lying in industrial plants or urban objects, transforming information into actionable intelligence to feed business decisions.
RIOT is a small operating system for networked, memory-constrained systems with a focus on low-power wireless Internet of things (IoT) devices. It is open-source software, released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Thread is an IPv6-based, low-power mesh networking technology for Internet of things (IoT) products. Thread is reliable, secure and delivers fast response times, extended coverage and years of battery life to elevate smart home and building experiences. The Thread protocol specification is available at no cost; however, this requires agreement and continued adherence to an End-User License Agreement (EULA), which states that "Membership in Thread Group is necessary to implement, practice, and ship Thread technology and Thread Group specifications."
OpenWSN is a project created at the University of California Berkeley and extended at the INRIA and at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) which aims to build an open standard-based and open source implementation of a complete constrained network protocol stack for wireless sensor networks and Internet of Things. The root of OpenWSN is a deterministic MAC layer implementing the IEEE 802.15.4e TSCH based on the concept of Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH). Above the MAC layer, the Low Power Lossy Network stack is based on IETF standards including the IETF 6TiSCH management and adaptation layer. The stack is complemented by an implementation of 6LoWPAN, RPL in non-storing mode, UDP and CoAP, enabling access to devices running the stack from the native IPv6 through open standards.
LoRa is a physical proprietary radio communication technique. It is based on spread spectrum modulation techniques derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology. It was developed by Cycleo, a company of Grenoble, France, later acquired by Semtech.
Matter, formerly Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP), is a proprietary standard for home automation that is royalty-free, with manufacturers only incurring certification costs. Announced on 18 December 2019, Matter aims to reduce fragmentation across different vendors, and achieve interoperability among smart home devices and Internet of things (IoT) platforms from different providers. The project group was launched and introduced by Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast and the Zigbee Alliance, now Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA). Subsequent members include IKEA, Huawei, and Schneider. Matter-compatible products and software updates for existing products are expected to be released in late 2022.
Static Context Header Compression(SCHC) is a standard compression and fragmentation mechanism defined in the IPv6 over LPWAN working group at the IETF. It offers compression and fragmentation of IPv6/UDP/CoAP packets to allow their transmission over the Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN).
The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly the Zigbee Alliance, is a group of companies that maintain and publish the Zigbee standard and the soon to be Matter standard. The name Zigbee is a registered trademark of this group, and is not a single technical standard. The organization publishes application profiles that allow multiple OEM vendors to create interoperable products. The relationship between IEEE 802.15.4 and Zigbee is similar to that between IEEE 802.11 and the Wi-Fi Alliance.