What applications are embodied in ZigBee technology in smart homes?

ZigBee

ZigBee technology is a short-distance, low-complexity, low-power, low-speed, low-cost, self-mapped, high-reliability, ultra-visual dual-barrel wireless communication technology. ZigBee is a wireless connection that can operate in 3 frequency bands of 2.4GHz (global epidemic), 868MHz (European popular) and 915MHz (U.S. popular), with transmission rates of 250kb/s, 20kb/s, and 40kb/s, respectively. . Similar to CDMA and GSM networks, the ZigBee data transmission module is similar to a mobile network base station.

The communication distance is from standard 75m to several hundred meters, a few kilometers, and supports unlimited expansion. It can be embedded in various devices and is mainly used for data transmission between various electronic devices with short distances, low power consumption and low transmission rates, and typical applications with periodic data, intermittent data, and low latency data transmission. , especially in the field of automatic control and remote control.

ZigBee Alliance

The ZigBee Alliance is a consortium of companies and other organizations established in 2004 to maintain the ZigBee wireless standard of the IEEE 802.15.4 Personal Area Network (PAN) while continuing to develop and provide interoperability testing. Among them, the IEEE802.1 5.4 standard provides the first layer (physical layer, PHY) and second layer (media access controller, MAC) of the network. The network layer and application layer are provided by ZigBee stacking software. As a wireless mesh network technology, most applications of ZigBee are based on a star or tree topology mesh network and can also be used for direct communication.

ZigBee can support 6*50,000 nodes. The master node controls other connection points. If a node cannot communicate with another node, these two nodes will be connected as repeaters to other nodes in the communication range. After 10 years of development, the ZigBee Alliance has combined suppliers from many fields to become a complete ecosystem. It provides test certification for all products that use the ZigBee standard. As of today, there are more than 400 members worldwide.

Application of ZigBee Technology in Smart Home

ZigBee technology supports the development and deployment of specific application software. Connecting these application specifications with the ZigBee stack enables manufacturers to develop targeted wireless products. Its application specifications cover smart home, smart energy, communications, medical, remote control, consumer electronics radio frequency, building automation, and retail services. In recent years, ZigBee technology has been widely used in the field of home intelligence. The application of this technology in smart home has some innate advantages.

First of all, ZigBee's transceiver module uses 2.4GHz direct sequence spread spectrum technology, which has better anti-jamming capability than ASK and frequency hopping radio stations. Second, ZigBee provides data integrity check and authentication functions. The encryption algorithm is adopted. General AES-128, 128-bit password, effectively improve the confidentiality of signal transmission; Third, ZigBee data transmission adopts short-frame transmission mode, fast transmission speed, and real-time performance; Finally, ZigBee technology scalability Stronger, due to the convenience of its networking and strong self-recovery capabilities, it can help users easily implement the addition of devices and systems in smart homes.

In April 2012, the ZigBee Alliance of the Global Enterprise Alliance announced that the ZigBee Light Link standard for the provision of wireless control solutions for smart lighting was officially launched. Texas Instruments (TI), Freescale, NXP, Shanghai Shunzhou Electronics, Rieter and other lC design companies, network equipment companies, lighting systems companies also introduced chip-level and system-level based ZigBee technology solutions.

Intelligent lighting provides a vast market space for the popularization of ZigBee technology. In addition to lighting, in other areas of smart home, ZigBee technology also plays an important role by virtue of its advantages. For example, the ZigBee solution CC2430 introduced by Chipcon of Texas Instruments is a highly integrated solution, which is mainly for home and Building automation, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, automatic meter reading, medical facilities, home entertainment and other end markets help manufacturers develop compact, high-performance and reliable wireless networking products, and shorten time-to-market and production And testing costs are minimized.

Of course, the application and promotion of ZigBee technology in smart home products is also limited by the development of the technology itself and inherent shortcomings. How to flexibly use the advantages of ZigBee technology and overcome its shortcomings, and strive to provide smart home products with high cost performance and high reliability The joint efforts of various companies in the industry chain.