Zigbee

What Is Zigbee:-

Zigbee is today's emerging wireless technology used widely in:

• Home automation and Security purposes  
• Industrial control
• Health Care Monitoring
• HVAC control
• Water level sensing 
• many other control and monitoring. 

Main emphasis in Zigbee is on low power handling in WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Networking).  P2P (Peer to Peer), Mesh and Cluster networks are possible using Zigbee. Zigbee aims in low cost, short range, reduced bit-rate data transmission. Its comparison with other wireless technologies is given in the table below:

	ZigBee	802.11 (Wi-Fi)	Bluetooth	UWB (Ultra Wide Band)	Wireless USB	IR Wireless
Data Rate	20, 40, and 250 Kbits/s to  1Mbits/s	11 & 54 Mbits/sec	1 Mbits/s	100-500 Mbits/s	62.5 Kbits/s	20-40 Kbits/s 115 Kbits/s 4 & 16 Mbits/s
Range	10-100 meters	50-100 meters	10 meters	<10 meters	10 meters	<10 meters (line of sight)
Networking Topology	Ad-hoc, peer to peer, star, or mesh	Point to hub	Ad-hoc, very small networks	Point to point	Point to point	Point to point
Operating Frequency	868 MHz (Europe) 900-928 MHz (NA), 2.4 GHz (worldwide)	2.4 and 5 GHz	2.4 GHz	3.1-10.6 GHz	2.4 GHz	800-900 nm
Complexity (Device and application impact)	Low	High	High	Medium	Low	Low
Power Consumption (Battery option and life)	Very low (low power is a design goal)	High	Medium	Low	Low	Low
Security	128 AES plus application layer security		64 and 128 bit encyption
Other Information	Devices can join an existing network in under 30ms	Device connection requires 3-5 seconds	Device connection requires up to 10 seconds
Typical Applications	Industrial control and monitoring, sensor networks, building automation, home control and automation, toys, games	Wireless LAN connectivity, broadband Internet access	Wireless connectivity between devices such as phones, PDA, laptops, headsets	Streaming video, home entertainment applications	PC peripheral connections	Remote controls, PC, PDA, phone, laptop links