In order to understand what ZigBee is, we need to start with the smart home. For your home to be truly smart, you need to have devices that can communicate with each other. To illustrate, you might want to have your kettle start boiling when you approach the front door. Or you might want the thermostat to reduce the temperature when you get into bed.
The idea behind the Internet of Things (IoT) is to have all of these devices connected. This way, they can share information without requiring you to operate each one individually. To make this happen, you need them all to speak the same language. But, this is far from the case currently; most of the devices in the typical home come from different manufacturers and speak different languages.
Zigbee
This is where Zigbee comes in. Zigbee is the world’s most popular Internet of Things (IoT) standard. Based on proven technology that is currently in use in millions of connected devices and backed by key players in the industry and a strong industry alliance consisting of hundreds of companies, it is the ideal solution for wireless commercial building applications.
What is ZigBee?
You might be interested in knowing where the concept got its name. When bees get back to their hive, they communicate their findings from the outside world to their counterparts using a waggle dance. This zigzag dance for communication is a great choice of name for such an innovative communication protocol.
ZigBee is essentially an open communication standard that operates wirelessly on the basis of the IP layer known as IEEE 802.14.4-2006. If that sounds like Greek to you, let’s look at it from a different perspective. Consider how wireless or Bluetooth devices speak to each other. ZigBee basically makes it possible for devices to ‘speak’ in an equally simple manner. It can, therefore, act as an alternative to wireless and Bluetooth communication for some devices.
ZigBee devices make use of radio frequencies to communicate, using 2.4GHz as a standard frequency.
These devices fall into three main categories:
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Routers – These devices pass signals and extend the range of a network.
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Coordinators – These control the formation of the network and provide security.
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End Devices – These are the devices we are interested in for the smart home. They perform specific roles, such as turning lights on or off or adjusting the temperature in your smart home. For instance, if you have a light bulb and light switch, both of which support ZigBee, you can use the latter to control the former even if they come from different manufacturers. They speak the same language and, thus, face no barrier to communication.
This also allows various ZigBee devices to interact with each other; for example, a ZigBee-enabled smart socket from a given manufacturer is able to communicate with a ZigBee smart light bulb from another manufacturer.
The ZigBee communication protocol allows devices to communicate using a mesh network topology, which enables it to be used both for small and large networks, some including thousands of devices. ZigBee is based
on 802.15.4 MAC and PHY layer, allowing it to leverage various capabilities, including basic message handling, congestion control, and techniques for joining a new network.
Zigbee is huge commercial success too!
Smart building solutions are a top priority for a variety of commercial industries including office, hospitality, medical, education, retail, and manufacturing. Zigbee technology is quickly becoming the top choice in commercial solutions when it comes to energy savings, efficient space utilization, improvement of working conditions, enhancing employee satisfaction and improving building maintenance.
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