Technology Primer - Zigbee Technology

Tech Primer

ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low-power digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless personal area networks (WPANs), such as connection of wireless headphones to cell phone. The IEEE802.15.4 workgroup established merely the low-level MAC layer and physical layer protocols, the ZigBee Alliance established the network layer protocols, API and interoperability tests.

ZigBee is suitable for radio-frequency (RF) applications that require a low data rate (250 Kbps), short range (from 75m to a few kilometres), low power, simple architecture, low cost, long battery life, and secure network. ZigBee works in the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands; 868 MHz in Europe, 915 MHz in countries like USA and Australia, and 2.4 GHz in most of the countries in the world. High bandwidth, high speed, dual channels (Tx and Rx).

The entire ZigBee protocols consist of security services, application layer (APS and ZDO), NWK layer, MAC layer and PHY layer, which can support three network structures of star, cluster tree and mesh. There are three different types of ZigBee devices which include ZigBee coordinator (ZC), ZigBee router (ZR) and ZigBee end device (ZED).The full and clear protocols are implemented by the ZigBee protocol stack.

ZigBee's goal is to define a general-purpose, inexpensive, self-organizing mesh network. Typical application areas include Building Automation, Smart Energy, Health, Care Telecommunication Services, Home Automation and RF4CE.

The ZigBee Alliance creates technology standards designed to create a thriving market for a variety of uses. Each new release adds to and improves functionality provided in previous versions of the specification.

The ZigBee 1.0 or release 2004 is basically aiming at the home lighting control, featured with 8 bit clusters, KVP/MSG services, CSkip addressing, joint routing and Coordinator binding.

The release 2006 is extended to the areas of commercial building automation, industrial plant monitoring, and home automation, etc., featuring 16 bit clusters, ZigBee cluster library (ZCL) , multicast, group devices, easy maintenance, targeted broadcasts, Over-the-Air (OTA) setup, optional coordinator binding, KVP service was removed.

The release 2007/PRO is fundamentally developed for the areas of commercial building automation, industrial plant monitoring, and home automation. A lot of new functions like address assignment, AODV routing only, many to one (source) routing and fragmentation can be found in ZigBee 2007/PRO.

Other Resources

• Basic introduction of Zigbee
• European ZigBee Forum
• ZigBee: The Choice for Energy Management and Efficiency
• ZigBee Wireless Sensor Applications for Health, Wellness and Fitness
• ZigBee Enables Smart Buildings of the Future Today
• ZigBee Vision for the Home
• ZigBee Technology: Wireless Control that Simply Works
• ZigBee FAQ
• ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 Summary
• ZigBee™ Wireless Transceiver Engineering Options
• ZigBee 2009 Resource Guide

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