This chapter is from the book
Summary
This chapter presented an overview of ZigBee, its applications, and its characteristics. The following are the key concepts that were described in the chapter:
- ZigBee, a wireless sensor and control network, was developed by the ZigBee Alliance.
- ZigBee applications can be used in home automation, commercial building automation, personal home health care, smart energy, and industrial process monitoring.
- The first ZigBee specification was published in 2004 and supported home control lighting; the ZigBee Alliance no longer supports the 2004 specification.
- In 2006, the ZigBee Alliance published the ZigBee 2006 specification, which was a modification of ZigBee 2004 specification.
- In 2007, ZigBee published ZigBee and ZigBee PRO feature sets.
- ZigBee defines three main types of devices: the coordinator, router, and end device. In addition, devices can act as a trust center or gateway.
- The coordinator is a full-function device (FFD). It performs the critical function of controlling the network, starting a network, and permitting other devices to join or leave the network.
- The trust center performs authentication of devices joining the network, security management, and key distribution.
- ZigBee offers star, tree, and mesh topologies.
- It uses layer architecture for its protocol.
- It uses IEEE 802.15.4 for its physical and MAC layers.
- ZigBee protocol architecture consists of the application, application support sublayer, and network layers
- It offers direct, group, and broadcast addressing.
- A ZigBee end device can have 240 endpoints, where each endpoint may represent different application.
- ZigBee PRO uses a mesh topology, and it is a beaconless network.
- ZigBee PRO offers stochastic addressing, group addressing, asymmetric links, fragmentation, and frequency agility.
- ZigBee PRO offers many-to-one routing and multicast routing.
- ZigBee PRO offers standard and high-security modes.
- ZigBee PRO security level is set to 5.
- ZigBee PRO provides link management.
- ZigBee PRO end devices are only powered by battery.
- The ZigBee 2007 specification supports tree and mesh topologies.
- ZigBee PRO selects the best channel at startup and during operation.