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Although most IT professionals, as well as a majority of consumers, are familiar with the Bluetooth wireless data-communications standard, very few are aware of the new ZigBee wireless data standard. In time this awareness will grow, but right now ZigBee is in the early stage of the adoption process; it's just beginning to be rolled out in industrial applications, with consumer-oriented applications soon to follow.
The ZigBee standard differs from Bluetooth in many ways, but essentially it addresses a different set of market requirements.
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First and foremost, ZigBee targets inexpensive, low-power applications. Integrated ZigBee chipsets, with battery power slated to last six months to two years, are available for $1 or less. In addition, ZigBee-enabled devices are networked readily: As many as 65,536 such devices can be connected in a star topology or a peer-to-peer configuration. The data rate for this cost-effective and low-power technology is 20K to 250Kbps.
ZigBee, based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, performs very well in environments with a low signal-to-noise ratio. Radio signals extend 10 meters to 40 meters, depending on settings and signal strength).
The ZigBee standard supports various network topologies fully -- including mesh configurations with routes between nodes dynamically modified based on the availability of intermediate routing nodes -- and is optimized for timing-critical applications and power management. It takes less than 30 msec to join a network, less than 15 msec to go from sleeping to active and less than 15 msec to access a channel.
There are three categories of ZigBee network node:
* ZigBee coordinator. Only one is required for each ZigBee network; initiates network formation and acts as the network coordinator; may act as a router once network is formed.
* ZigBee router. Optional component that may associate with a ZigBee coordinator or another ZigBee router; participates in multihop routing of messages.

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Comments (5)
A point of clarificationBy Anonymous on May 31, 2007, 5:15 pmZigbee is not the trademarked name of 802.15.4. Zigbee is a protocol and profiles that use and rely on 802.15.4. There are many other protocols that also use the...
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No Zigbee products...By R Cohen on May 31, 2007, 5:02 pmI'm confused by this article. It sounds like you can buy Zigbee products today - but you can't. You can buy software to write Zigbee applications and you can...
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And Zigbee isn't all that...By Anonymous on May 31, 2007, 4:47 pmWhile the article extolled the virtues of Zigbee [most of which are really virtues of 802.15.4], it glossed over many of the problems and provided some incorrect...
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...And Zigbee has securityBy Paul D on May 29, 2007, 4:56 pmOne critical difference between Bluetooth and Zigbee is that the Zigbee community didn't suffer from the Not-Invented-Here security syndrome that the Bluetooth SIG...
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Who are the big ZigBee players?By Anonymous on May 23, 2007, 8:15 pmI am interested in Zigbee as a possible investment. I have heard of only one quality zigbee company- Airbee Wireless- that is publicly traded (ABEW on the Nasdaq...
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