California Eastern Laboratories, which develops IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee radios, is now shipping its new MeshConnect Extended Range Module, with a range of up to two miles.
CEL says it can maintain strong connections, even in congested environments with interference from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Its +123.5 dB link budget enables higher data rates to be maintained for longer distances, but is said to maintain a long battery life due to its extremely low <1 uA (microamp) sleep mode power consumption.
Whereas most ZigBee modules run at 250 Kbps only, the MeshConnect module runs at 250 Kbps, 500 Kbps or a full 1 Mbps, enabling both higher speed applications as well as those that require a burst of throughput at key times. The MeshConnect module is unique in that it has a built in Codec processor that enables voice and low resolution video applications such as security cameras, walkie-talkies, and intercom systems.
The Extended Range Module enables applications as in-hospital patient monitoring, baby monitors with two-way voice, and RF4CE, a new technology for RF-based TV and set top box remote control. CEL offers modules based on their own MeshConnect transceivers ICs as well as industry-leading transceiver platforms from Freescale, Ember and Texas Instruments
The new module is said to maintain robust mesh connections even in harsh, noisy, indoor RF environments for applications such as large farm irrigation, wireless control for highway and street lighting, asset management with location tracking, enterprise security systems with video and voice, and wireless sensors in large industrial environments such as oil refineries and manufacturing plants.
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard for low power wireless radios is primarily for short range data communications standard with an embedded mesh architecture. The ZigBee Alliance , an association of more about 300 companies, works together to drive the networking software standard for such applications. The relationship between IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee is similar to that between IEEE 802.11 and the Wi-Fi Alliance.
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines physical layer operation on both the 915 MHz (at 40 kbps) and 2.4 GHz (at 250 kbps) on the unlicensed bands. ZigBee allows either mesh or “star” architecture, so a weak link might be resolved by rerouting. ZigBee is intended to address the sorts of pedestrian short range machine-to-machine (M2M) data connections for which even Wi-Fi networks would be gross overkill, such as lamp switches, television remotes or smart meters.
