PRESENTATION-I

WIRELESS AUTOMATION
USING ZIGBEE TECHNOLOGY

SUBMITTED BY
A.VIJAY EMMANUEL
22208106074
III ECE - B
03-01-11
 CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION

 WHAT IS ‘ZIGBEE’?

 NECESSITY OF ZIGBEE

 THE IEEE 802.15.4 STANDARD IN ZIGBEE

 ZIGBEE CHARACTERISITICS

 GENERAL ZIGBEE ARCHITECTURE

 PRINCIPAL ZIGBEE DEVICES

 NETWORK TOPOLOGY IN ZIGBEE

 COMPARISON OF ZIGBEE WITH OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

 APPLICATIONS OF ZIGBEE

 CONCLUSION

 REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION:
For the last few years, we've witnessed a great expansion of remote control devices in our
day-to-day life. Five years ago, infrared (IR) remotes for the television were the only such
devices in our homes. Now this number is going on increasing as more devices are controlled or
monitored from a distance. As of now now, the more remotely controlled devices we install in
our homes, the more remotes we accumulate. Devices such as TVs, garage door openers, light
and fan controls predominantly support one-way, point-to-point control. They're not
interchangeable and they don't support more than one device. Because most remotely controlled
devices are proprietary and not standardized among manufacturers, even those remotes used for
the same function (like turning on and off lights) are not interchangeable with similar remotes
from different manufacturers. In other words, you'll have as many separate remote control units
as you have devices to control. Some modern IR remotes enable you to control multiple devices.
But because the range for IR control is limited by line of sight, they're used predominantly for
home entertainment control.
To overcome these problems a simple, high efficient connectivity is required between
small packet devices such as sensors and automatic controllers which don't need high bandwidth
but need low latency and very low energy consumption for long battery lives and large device
arrays. There are a multitude of proprietary wireless systems manufactured today but as there
were no standards that met their application requirements these legacy systems are creating
significant interoperability problems with each other and with newer technologies so the IEEE
introduced the 802.15.4 wireless standard to ensure an integrated, complete, and interoperable
network for the market.

WHAT IS ‘ZIGBEE’?
ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small,
low-power digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standard for Low-Rate Wireless
Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs), such as wireless light switches with lamps, electrical
meters with in-home-displays, consumer electronics equipment via short-range radio. The
technology defined by the ZigBee specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive than
other WPANs, such as Bluetooth. ZigBee is targeted at radio-frequency (RF) applications that
require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking.

The name "ZigBee" is derived from the erratic zigging patterns many bees make between
flowers when collecting pollen. This is suggestive of the invisible webs of connections existing
in a fully wireless environment. It has been suggested that the name evokes the haphazard paths
that bees follow as they harvest pollen, similar to the way packets would move through a mesh
network Using communication system, whereby the bee dances in a zigzag pattern, worker bee is
able to share information such as the location, distance, And direction of a newly discovered
food source to her fellow colony members.

NECESSITY OF ZIGBEE:
There are a multitude of standards like Blue tooth and WiFi that address mid to high data
rates for voice, PC LANs, video, etc. However, up till now there hasn't been a wireless network
standard that meets the unique needs of sensors and control devices. Sensors and controls don't
need high bandwidth but they do need low latency and very low energy consumption for long
battery lives and for large device arrays. There are a multitude of proprietary wireless systems
manufactured today to solve a multitude of problems that don't require high data rates but do
require low cost and very low current drain. These proprietary systems were designed because
there were no standards that met their application requirements. These legacy systems are
creating significant interoperability problems with each other and with newer technologies.

ZigBee has been developed to meet the growing demand for capable wireless networking
between numerous low-power devices. In industry ZigBee is being used for automatic
manufacturing, with small transmitters in every device on the floor, allowing for communication
between devices to a central node. This new level of communication permits finely-tuned remote
monitoring and manipulation. In the consumer market ZigBee is being explored for everything
from linking low-power household devices such as smoke alarms to a central housing control
unit, to centralized light controls. Due to its low power output, ZigBee devices can sustain
themselves on a small battery for many months, or even years, making them ideal for install-and-
forget purposes, such as most small household systems.

THE IEEE 802.15.4 STANDARD IN ZIGBEE:

IEEE 802.15.4 is a standard which specifies the physical layer and media access control
for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs). It is maintained by the IEEE 802.15
working group. It is the basis for the ZigBee which further attempts to offer a complete
networking solution by developing the upper layers which are not covered by the standard.
Alternatively, it can be used with 6LoWPAN and standard Internet protocols to build a Wireless
Embedded Internet.

IEEE standard 802.15.4 intends to offer the fundamental lower network layers of a type
of wireless personal area network (WPAN) which focuses on low-cost, low-speed ubiquitous
communication between devices (in contrast with other, more end user-oriented approaches,
such as Wi-Fi). The emphasis is on very low cost communication of nearby devices with little to
no underlying infrastructure, intending to exploit this to lower power consumption even more.

The basic framework conceives a 10-meter communications range with a transfer rate of
250 kbit/s. Tradeoffs are possible to favor more radically embedded devices with even lower
power requirements, through the definition of not one, but several physical layers. Lower transfer
rates of 20 and 40 kbit/s were initially defined, with the 100 kbit/s rate being added in the current
revision.

Important features include real-time suitability by reservation of guaranteed time slots,

collision avoidance through CSMA/CA and integrated support for secure communications.
Devices also include power management functions such as link quality and energy detection.
802.15.4-conformant devices may use one of three possible frequency bands for operation.

The main advantages of this standard are network flexibility, low cost, very low power
consumption, and low data rate in an adhoc self-organizing network among inexpensive fixed,
portable and moving devices.
ZIGBEE CHARACTERISITICS:

 ZigBee operates is one of three license free bands 2.4-2.4835 GHz, 868-870 MHz and
902-928 MHz dual PHY modes. 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. ZigBee incorporates a CSMA-CA
(Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) protocol this protocol that reduces
the probability of interfering with other users and automatic retransmission of data ensures
robustness. By determining when to transmit, unnecessary clashes are avoided.
 High throughput and low latency for low duty-cycle applications (<0.1%). 28-bit AES
encryption – Provides secure connections between device
 Addressing space of up to 64 bit IEEE address devices, 65,535 networks

 Range: 50m typical (5-500m based on environment) Link quality indication Clear
channel assessment Retries and acknowledgements Support for guaranteed time slots and
packet freshness
 Fully reliable “hand-shaked” data transfer protocol. Different topologies such as star,
peer-to-peer, mesh
ZIGBEE ARCHITECTURE:
The architecture of a zigbee network is as shown. It consists of the various OSI
layers which emulate the communication process and are described below:

 PHYSICAL LAYER:
The PHY service enables the transmission and reception of PHY protocol data units
(PPDU) across the physical radio channel. The features of the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY physical layer
are :

 Activation and deactivation of the radio transceiver,

 energy detection (ED),
 Link quality indication (LQI),
 Clear channel assessment (CCA),
 Channel selection.
 MAC LAYER:
The MAC service enables the transmission and reception of MAC protocol data
units (MPDU) across the PHY data service. The features of MAC sub layer are

 Beacon Management,

 CSMA-CA Mechanism,

 GTS management,

 Acknowledged frame delivery

 DATA TRANSFER LAYER:

Information in a ZigBee network is transferred in packets. Each packet has a maximum
size of 128 bytes, allowing for a maximum payload of 104 bytes. The ZigBee specification
supports a maximum data transfer rate of 250 kbps for a range of up to 100 meters. A ZigBee
network has a data link layer with a method for time synchronization. For priority messages, a
guaranteed time slot mechanism has been incorporated. This allows high priority messages to be
sent across the network as rapidly as possible.

 NETWORK AND APPLICATION LAYER:

This level in the ZigBee architecture includes the ZigBee Device Object (ZDO), User-
Defined Application Profile(s) and the Application Support (APS) Sub-layer. It facilitates the
user to access global database resources and connect to the network link.

PRINCIPAL ZIGBEE DEVICES:

There are three different types of ZigBee devices:

• ZigBee coordinator (ZC): The most capable device, the coordinator forms the root of
the network tree and might bridge to other networks. There is exactly one ZigBee
coordinator in each network since it is the device that started the network originally. It is
able to store information about the network, including acting as the Trust Centre &
repository for security keys. Starts network formation process using specified network
 parameters. Transmits network beacons, Manages network nodes, Stores network node
information, Routes messages between paired nodes and acts as a PAN coordinator.

• ZigBee Router (ZR): As well as running an application function, a router can act as an
intermediate router, passing on data from other devices. It is an Optional network
component and acts as 802.15.4 2003 coordinator (FFD).Designed for battery powered or
high energy savings it searches for available networks, transfers data from its application
as necessary ,determines whether data is pending, Requests data from the network
coordinator, can sleep for extended periods, participates in multihop routing of messages.

• ZigBee End Device (ZED): Contains just enough functionality to talk to the parent node
(either the coordinator or a router); it cannot relay data from other devices. This
relationship allows the node to be asleep a significant amount of the time thereby giving
long battery life. A ZED requires the least amount of memory, and therefore can be less
expensive to manufacture than a ZR or ZC.It does not allow association or participate in
routing two classes of devices. A device can be a full-function device (FFD) or reduced-
function device (RFD) depending on network needs

NETWORK TOPOLOGY IN ZIGBEE:

Depending on the application requirements, the LR-WPAN may operate in either
of two topologies: the star topology or the peer-to-peer topology:

 STAR TOPOLOGY:
In the star topology the communication is established between devices and a single
central controller, called the PAN coordinator. A device typically has some associated
application and is either the initiation point or the termination point for network
communications. A PAN coordinator may also have a specific application, but it can be used
to initiate, terminate, or route communication around the network. The PAN coordinator is the
primary controller of the PAN. All devices operating on a network of either topology shall
 have unique 64 bit extended addresses. This address can be used for direct communication
within the PAN, or it can be exchanged for a short address allocated by the PAN coordinator
when the device associates. The PAN coordinator may be mains powered, while the devices
will most likely be battery powered.

Applications that benefit from a star Topology include home automation, personal
computer (PC) peripherals, toys and games, and personal health care.

 PEER TO PEER TOPOLOGY:

The peer-to-peer topology also has a PAN coordinator; however, it differs from
the star topology in that any device can communicate with any other device as long as they are in
range of one another. Peer-to-peer Topology allows more complex network formations to be
implemented, such as mesh networking topology.

Applications such as industrial control and monitoring, wireless sensor networks, asset
and inventory tracking, intelligent agriculture, and security would benefit from such a network
topology. A peer-to-peer network can be ad hoc, self-organizing and self-healing. It may also
allow multiple hops to route messages from any device to any other device on the network. Such
functions can be added at the network layer, but are not part of this standard.

COMPARISON OF ZIGBEE WITH OTHER TECHNOLOGIES:

APPLICATIONS OF ZIGBEE:
In building automation: For security, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation & A/c),
lighting and access control, lawn and garden irrigation. In personal healthcare: For patient
monitoring, fitness monitoring, management of non-critical, low-acuity healthcare services
targeted at chronic disease, general health, wellness and fitness. In industrial control: For asset,
environment and energy management and process control. In Consumer electronics: TV, VCR,
DVD/CD universal remotes and in computer peripherals such as wireless mouse, keyboard,
joystick etc…

CONCLUSION:
Zigbee wireless technologies consume less power and require low bandwidth
compared to other technologies thus it is well suitable for short range secured communication. It
Employs powerful IEEE 802.15.4 standard architecture and has features such as 128-bit AES
encryption, handshaking, 64-bit addressing etc…Principal devices consist of Zigbee
coordinators(ZC),routers(ZR) and end devices(ZED). Network topology such as star, ring, peer
to peer, mesh networks can be employed. Areas of application include building automation,
health care, consumer electronics, residential lighting PC peripherals etc
 Comparing ZigBee technology with the present wireless technologies it is evident that it
is well suited for dedicated automated networks and can have a safe future in the effervescent
world of wireless technology. There is definitely a place on the market for ZigBee, since no
global standard exists today in the wireless sensor network area.

REFERENCES:

• ZigBee “Wireless sensors and control networks” presented at Wireless Congress 2008.
• ZigBee “The green wireless solution” published by Bob Heile, Chairman, ZigBee
alliance December 2008.
• ZigBee Technical Overview, Tokyo Members Meeting Open House, Tokyo, Japan -
February 2008.

 WEBSITES:-

1. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/zigbee

2. http://www.zigbee.org/journals

3. http://www.wisegeek.com/zigbee_automation.htm