ZIGBEE TECHNOLOGY

ABSTRACT

Imagine waking up early from bed on a cold day and being in a lethargic (inactive) state; have to perform the daily chores at home right from switching ON/OFF lights to activating water pumps etc...As you make your way to work, would you like to call home from your mobile to make sure you haven’t left anything on during the last-minute rush to get out of the door?  ZigBee springs up as a solution to get rid of these irksome domestic jobs and contributes for the realization of a Smart Home. The ‘Smart Home’ with all kinds of appliances from kitchenware to burglar alarms controlled by a single electronic device has been the dream of householders for decades.  Now those dreams of domestic bliss will shortly become reality. ZigBee, a new, cheap wireless technology will allow people to remotely-control every electrical device in their home from one gadget.

ZigBee is a home-area network designed specifically to replace the proliferation of individual remote controls. ZigBee was created to satisfy the market's need for a cost-effective, standards-based wireless network that supports low data rates, low power consumption, security, and reliability. ZigBee is so low powered that a typical battery-powered node can wake up, check in, send data, and shut down in less than 30 ms.

If the home control/home automation market is going to happen at all, it needs to be at the right price. The idea of controlling the lights, the heating, the security system and many other common items in the home from one remote control device has captured the imagination of inventors for many years but unless it can be done for a snip, it will continue not to happen. ZigBee is a one stop solution to this, offering low cost and low power consumption.

ZIGBEE TECHNOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

ZIGBEE is a hot new personal area network radio communications standard that provides a short range low cost networking capability. Using a tenth of the processor memory requirements of Bluetooth and a fraction of the MIPS needed for 802.11 networking devices ZigBee is the best solution for low data rate short-range communications.  ZigBee got its name from the way bees zig and zag while tracking between flowers and relaying information to other bees about where to find resources (router bees!). Its mission is to bring about the existence of a broad range of inter-operable consumer devices by establishing open industry specifications for unlicensed, untethered peripheral, control and entertainment devices requiring the lowest cost and lowest power consumption communications between compliant devices anywhere in and around the home.