The ZigBee Alliance, a short-range, wireless solutions for use in residential, commercial and industrial applications, today announced the completion and immediate member availability of ZigBee 2006, its enhanced version of the ZigBee standard. The original ZigBee standard was ratified by members in December 2004.
EE Times reports one of the main differences between the 2006 and 2004 versions is a change in the addressing scheme. Public availability of the standard is scheduled for the first quarter of 2007.
ZigBee enables the development of easily deployable low-cost, low-power, monitoring and control products for homes, commercial buildings and industrial plant monitoring.
Products based on the enhanced ZigBee standard offer OEMs a variety of control, convenience and energy management tools. Improvements and new features include:
- Group Devices — OEMs may create groups of devices, while allowing individual devices to belong to multiple groups. With the push of one button, all lights in a home could be turned off, or turn off all of the lights on a single floor or a single room. ZigBee enables endless design possibilities.
- Easy Maintenance — ZigBee technology prevents a single point-of-failure on the network and allows for easy replacement or repair of devices through a simple process of storing a device’s information onto a nearby device.
- Targeted Broadcasts — Broadcasts of commands can be specified for specific types of devices: routers, “awake” or “sleeping” devices. This feature reduces RAM requirements, lowering the total cost of the components for ZigBee products.
- Over-the-Air Setup — Opens the door for an array of new setup tools to facilitate adding devices to a network. The setup tools can be used to bind specific devices, such as a light fixture and a corresponding switch, together, and professional installers may use the tools to modify a network on a larger scale.
A typical low-power ZigBee device runs on universally available batteries for years and can communicate with nearby devices. All ZigBee Alliance certified devices undergo two rigorous certification processes administered by independent laboratories.
Leading supporters of IEEE 802.15.4 radios using the ZigBee protocol stack believe now that the 2006 version has been finalized, development will grow. To date, most of the activity has been for 802.15.4 with proprietary protocol stacks and applications.
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard operates at data rates of 10 kbps to a max of 250 kbps. Wireless links can operate in three unlicensed frequency bands (2.4GHz, 868Mhz and 915MHz). When lines of communication exceed 30 feet, the 802.15.4 standard creates self-configuring, multihop networks. It is intended to operate in an unlicensed, international frequency band with applications in sensors, interactive toys, smart badges, remote controls, and home automation.
The ZigBee Alliance specification is a combination of HomeRF Lite and the 802.15.4 specification and operates over 16 channels with data transmission rates of up to 250kbps. ZigBee’s technology is slower than 802.11b, Bluetooth and UltraWideBand, but it consumes significantly less power and can connect up to 64,000 nodes on one network.
Dust Networks, Crossbow Technology, Ember and Millennial Net are some of the leaders in the field.
