In an effort to drum up support for its low-power wireless network standard, the ZigBee Alliance, an association comprised of over 160 companies, has agreed to make its spec available to the public at the end of this month.
The ZigBee specification, which has been in development for at least two years and was approved by alliance members in December, is an application stack that sits on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 network. Because ZigBee consumes little power, it holds huge promise in industrial automation as well as home and building automation.
"ZigBee is aimed at things that sense and control," said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance in a recent interview with Managing Automation. It's based on the concept of mesh-networking in which devices on the network can organize and heal themselves. "When you are talking about large networks things are going to happen, and if the network can't close the wound -- stop the bleeding and keep working -- then you wind up in trouble."
Applications using ZigBee-based technology could range from monitoring the temperature of a pipeline to managing the energy in a factory or commercial building. Currently there are four companies -- Chipcon, CompXs, Ember and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. -- that have announced ZigBee-compliant development platforms. But to date, there are no ZigBee-ready products. That's the reason for the public disclosure.
"By making the ZigBee specification publicly available later this month, we've greatly expanded the universe of potential ZigBee developers and made it easy for universities, research institutions and software developers to exploit the ZigBee technology to create new wireless monitoring and sensing applications," Heile said in a statement.
The spec will be available in read-only format, free of charge after registering on the ZigBee website. Companies interested in reviewing all the technical details of the specification, can join the ZigBee Alliance Adopter Class.
There are three levels of membership: Promoter ($40,000 for a 12-month period), Participant ($9,500 for a 12-month period) and Adopter ($3,500). Having the ability to see the spec prior to committing to a membership "allows a company to try before they buy," said Joyce Putscher, Research Director at In-Stat, a research firm in Scottsdale, AZ.
In-Stat recently released a report predicting aggressive growth for Personal Area Networking (PAN), a buzz phrase for networks using wireless technologies. For example, 802.15.4 nodes and chipsets are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 200% from 2004 through 2009, surpassing 150 million units.
The release of the ZigBee spec to the public is just one of the major milestones the alliance has achieved. All that remains is interoperability testing, which is ongoing, to head off product incompatibility issues that could impede further development of ZigBee-compliant technology.
For more insights on this topic, read: Disruptive Technologies: Sensor Networks; To Zig or Mesh? Two Distinct Options; and Cutting the Cord.