ZIGBEE
Introduction:
When you hold the TV remote and wish to use it you have to necessarily point your
control at the device. This one-way, line-of-sight, short-range communication uses
infrared (IR) sensors to enable communication and control and it is possible to operate
the TV remotely only with its control unit.
Add other home theatre modules, an air- conditioner and remotely enabled fans and lights
to your room, and you become a juggler who has to handle not only these remotes, but
also more numbers that will accompany other home appliances you are likely to use.
Some remotes do serve to control more than one device after ‘memorizing' access codes,
but this interoperability is restricted to LOS, that too only for a set of related equipment,
like the different units of a home entertainment system
Now picture a home with entertainment units, security systems including fire alarm,
smoke detector and burglar alarm, air-conditioners and kitchen appliances all within
whispering distance from each other and imagine a single unit that talks with all the
devices, no longer depending on line-of-sight, and traffic no longer being one-way.
This means that the devices and the control unit would all need a common standard to
enable intelligible communication. ZigBee is such a standard for embedded application
software and has been ratified in late 2004 under IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Networking
Standards.
ZigBee is an established set of specifications for wireless personal area networking
(WPAN), i.e., digital radio connections between computers and related devices. This kind
of network eliminates use of physical data buses like USB and Ethernet cables. The
devices could include telephones, hand-held digital assistants, sensors and controls
located within a few meters of each other.
ZigBee is one of the global standards of communication protocol formulated by the
relevant task force under the IEEE 802.15 working group. The fourth in the series,
WPAN Low Rate/ZigBee is the newest and provides specifications for devices that have
low data rates, consume very low power and are thus characterized by long battery life.
Other standards like Bluetooth and IrDA address high data rate applications such as
voice, video and LAN communications.
The ZigBee Alliance has been set up as “an association of companies working together to
enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control
products based on an open global standard”.
Once a manufacturer enrolls in this Alliance for a fee, he can have access to the standard
and implement it in his products in the form of ZigBee chipsets that would be built into
the end devices. Philips, Motorola, Intel, HP are all members of the Alliance . The goal is
“to provide the consumer with ultimate flexibility, mobility, and ease of use by building
wireless intelligence and capabilities into every day devices. ZigBee technology will be
embedded in a wide range of products and applications across consumer, commercial,
industrial and government markets worldwide. For the first time, companies will have a
standards-based wireless platform optimized for the unique needs of remote monitoring
and control applications, including simplicity, reliability, low-cost and low-power”.
The target networks encompass a wide range of devices with low data rates in the
Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) radio bands, with building-automation controls
like intruder/fire alarms, thermostats and remote (wireless) switches, video/audio remote
controls likely to be the most popular applications. So far sensor and control devices have
been marketed as proprietary items for want of a standard. With acceptance and
implementation of ZigBee, interoperability will be enabled in multi-purpose, self-
organizing mesh networks
Architecture:
Though WPAN implies a reach of only a few meters, 30 feet in the case of ZigBee, the
network will have several layers, so designed as to enable intrapersonal communication
within the network, connection to a network of higher level and ultimately an uplink to
the Web.
The ZigBee Standard has evolved standardized sets of solutions, called ‘layers'. These
layers facilitate the features that make ZigBee very attractive: low cost, easy
implementation, reliable data transfer, short-range operations, very low power
consumption and adequate security features.
1. Network and Application Support layer : The network layer permits growth of
network sans high power transmitters. This layer can handle huge numbers of nodes. This
level in the ZigBee architecture includes the ZigBee Device Object (ZDO), user-defined
application profile(s) and the Application Support (APS) sub-layer.
The APS sub-layer's responsibilities include maintenance of tables that enable matching
between two devices and communication among them, and also discovery, the aspect that
identifies other devices that operate in the operating space of any device.
The responsibility of determining the nature of the device (Coordinator / FFD or RFD) in
the network, commencing and replying to binding requests and ensuring a secure
relationship between devices rests with the ZDO (Zigbee Define Object). The user-
defined application refers to the end device that conforms to the ZigBee Standard.
2. Physical (PHY) layer : The IEEE802.15.4 PHY physical layer accommodates high
levels of integration by using direct sequence to permit simplicity in the analog circuitry
and enable cheaper implementations.
3. Media access control (MAC) layer : The IEEE802.15.4 MAC media access control
layer permits use of several topologies without introducing complexity and is meant to
work with large numbers of devices.
Figure 1: IEEE 802.15.4 / ZigBee Stack Architecture
Device Types:
There are three different ZigBee device types that operate on these layers in any self-
organizing application network.
These devices have 64-bit IEEE addresses, with option to enable shorter addresses to
reduce packet size, and work in either of two addressing modes – star and peer-to-peer.
1. The ZigBee coordinator node : There is one, and only one, ZigBee coordinator in
each network to act as the router to other networks, and can be likened to the root of a
(network) tree. It is designed to store information about the network.
2. The full function device FFD : The FFD is an intermediary router transmitting data
from other devices. It needs lesser memory than the ZigBee coordinator node, and entails
lesser manufacturing costs. It can operate in all topologies and can act as a coordinator.
3. The reduced function device RFD : This device is just capable of talking in the
network; it cannot relay data from other devices. Requiring even less memory, (no flash,
very little ROM and RAM), an RFD will thus be cheaper than an FFD. This device talks
only to a network coordinator and can be implemented very simply in star topology.
ZigBee Characteristics:
The focus of network applications under the IEEE 802.15.4 / ZigBee standard include the
features of low power consumption, needed for only two major modes (Tx/Rx or Sleep),
high density of nodes per network, low costs and simple implementation.
These features are enabled by the following characteristics. 2.4GHz and 868/915 MHz
dual PHY modes. This represents three license-free bands: 2.4-2.4835 GHz, 868-870
MHz and 902-928 MHz. The number of channels allotted to each frequency band is fixed
at sixteen (numbered 11-26), one (numbered 0) and ten (numbered 1-10) respectively.
The higher frequency band is applicable worldwide, and the lower band in the areas of
North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand .
• Low power consumption, with battery life ranging from months to years. Considering
the number of devices with remotes in use at present, it is easy to see that more numbers
of batteries need to be provisioned every so often, entailing regular (as well as timely),
recurring expenditure. In the ZigBee standard, longer battery life is achievable by either
of two means: continuous network connection and slow but sure battery drain, or
intermittent connection and even slower battery drain.
• Maximum data rates allowed for each of these frequency bands are fixed as 250 kbps
@2.4 GHz, 40 kbps @ 915 MHz, and 20 kbps @868 MHz.
• High throughput and low latency for low duty-cycle applications (<0.1%)
• Channel access using Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA
- CA)
• Addressing space of up to 64 bit IEEE address devices, 65,535 networks
• 50m typical range
• Fully reliable “hand-shaked” data transfer protocol.
• Different topologies as illustrated below: star, peer-to-peer, mesh
Figure 2: ZigBee Topologies
Traffic Types:
ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 addresses three typical traffic types. IEEE 802.15.4 MAC can
accommodate all the types.
1. Data is periodic. The application dictates the rate, and the sensor activates, checks for
data and deactivates.
2. Data is intermittent. The application, or other stimulus, determines the rate, as in the
case of say smoke detectors. The device needs to connect to the network only when
communication is necessitated. This type enables optimum saving on energy.
3. Data is repetitive, and the rate is fixed a priori. Depending on allotted time slots, called
GTS (guaranteed time slot), devices operate for fixed durations.
ZigBee employs either of two modes, beacon or non-beacon to enable the to-and-fro data
traffic. Beacon mode is used when the coordinator runs on batteries and thus offers
maximum power savings, whereas the non-beacon mode finds favour when the
coordinator is mains-powered.
In the beacon mode, a device watches out for the coordinator's beacon that gets
transmitted at periodically, locks on and looks for messages addressed to it. If message
transmission is complete, the coordinator dictates a schedule for the next beacon so that
the device ‘goes to sleep'; in fact, the coordinator itself switches to sleep mode.
While using the beacon mode, all the devices in a mesh network know when to
communicate with each other. In this mode, necessarily, the timing circuits have to be
quite accurate, or wake up sooner to be sure not to miss the beacon. This in turn means an
increase in power consumption by the coordinator's receiver, entailing an optimal
increase in costs.
Figure 1: Beacon Network Communication
The non-beacon mode will be included in a system where devices are ‘asleep' nearly
always, as in smoke detectors and burglar alarms. The devices wake up and confirm their
continued presence in the network at random intervals.
On detection of activity, the sensors ‘spring to attention', as it were, and transmit to the
ever-waiting coordinator's receiver (since it is mains-powered). However, there is the
remotest of chances that a sensor finds the channel busy, in which case the receiver
unfortunately would ‘miss a call'.
Figure 2: Non-Beacon Network Communication
Network Model:
The functions of the Coordinator, which usually remains in the receptive mode,
encompass network set-up, beacon transmission, node management, storage of node
information and message routing between nodes.
The network node, however, is meant to save energy (and so ‘sleeps' for long periods)
and its functions include searching for network availability, data transfer, checks for
pending data and queries for data from the coordinator.
Figure 1: ZigBee Network Model
For the sake of simplicity without jeopardising robustness, this particular IEEE standard
defines a quartet frame structure and a super-frame structure used optionally only by the
coordinator.
The four frame structures are
Beacon frame for transmission of beacons
Data frame for all data transfers
Acknowledgement frame for successful frame receipt confirmations
MAC command frame
These frame structures and the coordinator's super-frame structure play critical roles in
security of data and integrity in transmission.
All protocol layers contribute headers and footers to the frame structure, such that the
total overheads for each data packet range are from 15 octets (for short addresses) to 31
octets (for 64-bit addresses).
The coordinator lays down the format for the super-frame for sending beacons after every
15.38 ms or/and multiples thereof, up to 252s. This interval is determined a priori and the
coordinator thus enables sixteen time slots of identical width between beacons so that
channel access is contention-less. Within each time slot, access is contention-based.
Nonetheless, the coordinator provides as many as seven GTS (guaranteed time slots) for
every beacon interval to ensure better quality.
Technology Comparisons:
The “Why ZigBee” question has always had an implied, but never quite worded follower
phrase “…when there is Bluetooth”. A comparative study of the two can be found in The
bandwidth of Bluetooth is 1 Mbps, ZigBee's is one-fourth of this value. The strength of
Bluetooth lies in its ability to allow interoperability and replacement of cables, ZigBee's,
of course, is low costs and long battery life.
In terms of protocol stack size, ZigBee's 32 KB is about one-third of the stack size
necessary in other wireless technologies (for limited capability end devices, the stack size
is as low as 4 KB).
Most important in any meaningful comparison are the diverse application areas of all the
different wireless technologies. Bluetooth is meant for such target areas as wireless
USB's, handsets and headsets, whereas ZigBee is meant to cater to the sensors and remote
controls market and other battery operated products.
In a gist, it may be said that they are neither complementary standards nor competitors,
but just essential standards for different targeted applications. The earlier Bluetooth
targets interfaces between PDA and other device (mobile phone / printer etc) and cordless
audio applications.
The IEEE 802.15.4–based ZigBee is designed for remote controls and sensors, which are
very many in number, but need only small data packets and, mainly, extremely low power
consumption for (long) life. Therefore they are naturally different in their approach to
their respective application arenas.
ZigBee Applications:
The ZigBee Alliance targets applications "across consumer, commercial, industrial and
government markets worldwide".
Unwired applications are highly sought after in many networks that are characterized by
numerous nodes consuming minimum power and enjoying long battery lives.
ZigBee technology is designed to best suit these applications, for the reason that it
enables reduced costs of development, very fast market adoption, and rapid ROI.
Airbee Wireless Inc has tied up with Radio crafts AS to deliver "out-of-the-box" ZigBee-
ready solutions; the former supplying the software and the latter making the module
platforms. With even light controls and thermostat producers joining the ZigBee Alliance,
the list is growing healthily and includes big OEM names like HP, Philips, Motorola and
Intel.
With ZigBee designed to enable two-way communications, not only will the consumer be
able to monitor and keep track of domestic utilities usage, but also feed it to a computer
system for data analysis.
A recent analyst report issued by West Technology Research Solutions estimates that by
the year 2008, "annual shipments for ZigBee chipsets into the home automation segment
alone will exceed 339 million units," and will show up in "light switches, fire and smoke
detectors, thermostats, appliances in the kitchen, video and audio remote controls,
landscaping, and security systems."
Futurists are sure to hold ZigBee up and say, "See, I told you so". The ZigBee Alliance is
nearly 200 strong and growing, with more OEM's signing up. This means that more and
more products and even later, all devices and their controls will be based on this standard.
Since Wireless personal Area Networking applies not only to household devices, but also
to individualized office automation applications, ZigBee is here to stay. It is more than
likely the basis of future home-networking solutions.
