The ZigBee Alliance, an industry organization that sets communication and interoperability standards for wireless sensor networks using devices compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless devices operating at 2.45 GHz, today announced ZigBee 3.0. The new protocol unifies six industry-specific ZigBee standards into a single umbrella standard.
Ryan Maley, the ZigBee Alliance’s director of strategic marketing, says ZigBee 3.0 was developed partly in response to the fact that hardware used to build wireless sensors has evolved significantly since the IEEE 802.15.4 standard was ratified in 2003. Back then, he says, a sensor might have been built on a board with an 8-bit microprocessor with separate radios, but system-on-a-chip electronics now combine microprocessors offering greater computing power with integrated radios. “So there is no need to optimize and cut down every bit and byte specific to the environment [in which the device will be used] or the application it will support,” Maley explains.
What’s more, Maley adds, ZigBee devices are increasingly being used across applications and industries. “ZigBee has multiple standards for building automation or home automation,” he says, “but as devices become more prevalent and there is more connectivity, people are thinking of more things to do with them.”
Under ZigBee 3.0, devices compliant with the ZigBee Home Automation, ZigBee Light Link, ZigBee Building Automation, ZigBee Retail Services, ZigBee Health Care or ZigBee Telecommunication standards will all be able to interoperate. A seventh standard, ZigBee Smart Energy, is interoperable with ZigBee 3.0 at the application level, but the security specification (based on elliptical curve cryptography) that ZigBee Smart Energy employs will be integrated as an optional feature of ZigBee 3.0. Many “smart” utility meters utilize the ZigBee Smart Energy standard to enable bi-directional communication between utilities and rate-payers. According to Maley, there are currently 70 million ZigBee-compliant utility meters installed throughout the United States.
The ZigBee Alliance’s goal, Maley says, is to unify all existing standards and have all already-installed ZigBee devices be forward-compatible with ZigBee 3.0 (meaning a device that presently complies with ZigBee Home Automation, for example, would also comply with ZigBee 3.0) or be compliant with ZigBee 3.0 via a software upgrade. He recommends that ZigBee users in the commercial space, such as companies that utilize ZigBee sensors to automate lighting or heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, should check with their building energy management vendors to inquire whether a software upgrade is required.
The draft ZigBee 3.0 standard is available to members of the ZigBee Alliance today, and is expected to be ratified during the fourth quarter of 2015. Maley says a number of ZigBee 3.0 demonstrations are planned for the Consumer Electronics Show, being held on January 6-9, 2015.
While many early deployments of ZigBee radios were in the commercial sector, to control lighting or energy use as part of efficiency programs, the standard has seen rapid acceleration in residential uses during the past two years. Lighting providers, such as Philips and GE, add ZigBee radios to LED bulbs so they can be controlled through smart home applications. Telecommunications companies are also utilizing ZigBee radios as part of smart home offerings that bundle telephone, television, security and energy-management systems into a single platform.
In the commercial space, Maley reports, ZigBee-based automation systems have seen some competition from proprietary sensor networks, or from those that rely on Wi-Fi or other networking protocols. Some smart home devices use the IPv6 over Low-power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) protocols. This summer, Samsung, chipmaker ARM and smart thermostat manufacturer Nest introduced a 6LoWPAN networking standard known as Thread, targeted at smart home applications.