MANHASSET, N.Y. — Two and a half years in the making, the ZigBee Alliance has released the final specifications for a wireless sensor networking technology that is expected to permeate applications from home automation to the factory floor.
"I'm very excited," said Bob Heile, chair of the ZigBee Alliance. "Eighteen months ago we'd hoped to be out in October, so to get within eight weeks or so is just great."
"It's about time," said Jon Adams, director of radio technology at Freescale Semiconductor. "The only way the market is going to start happening is when the spec gets out there and people can build with it and get their products compliance tested and certified."
Heile spoke following the ZigBee Open House meeting in Seoul, South Korea. "We had 270 people show up, including 23 companies," he said. "We had a lot of interest." An earlier meeting in Boston drew 220 attendees. The group will next meet in San Francisco beginning Feb. 28.
With a range of over 100 meters, data rates of up to 250 Kbits/s and support for up to 65,000 nodes in star, cluster or mesh configurations, ZigBee targets low-data-rate, low-power applications ranging from home lighting control and automation to meter reading to industrial automation.
Given the variety of applications, Heile said analysts' predictions of ZigBee chip shipments are "all over the map," ranging from 5 million to 100 million units. "But 10 to 20 million is what I'd expect," he said, based on vendor estimates.
Though the specification is finished, the Alliance has yet to decide when to release it. "Now it's in a form familiar to those that have worked on it, but the next step is to get it into a form helpful to those who weren't involved in it," said Heile. He added that there will likely be a download license arrangement — but at no cost.
Interoperability tests are already underway, beginning in October in Denver. "We've run four to date as part of the ZigBee qualification group," Heile said. "By the first half of 2005 we will see the first ZigBee devices on the street."
Chip, module and development kit announcements have been steady. On Tuesday (Dec. 14), Freescale announced that MaxStream Inc. (Lindon, Utah) has selected its platform for an assortment of ZigBee wireless products to be released in the first quarter of 2005. Called XBee, the family will be FCC and CE-type approved and will incorporate Freescale's ZigBee chip sets onto RF modules.
Freescale also announced availability of its transceivers, which will cost $3.26 each in 10,000-piece quantities.
Competition mounting
During ZigBee's incubation, competition has been increasing from other wireless standards like Bluetooth. The Bluetooth roadmap has also extended into home and industrial control applications. Heile was dismissive. "They [the Bluetooth SIG] recognize that there's a big market space here."
Estimating it could take up to two years for the Bluetooth SIG to complete a spec for industrial applications, Heile boasted, "By then they can eat my exhaust."
As for proprietary schemes such as Cypress Semiconductor's Wireless USB technology, which also is aiming at industrial control, he was equally ambivalent. "There'll always be target solutions that aim at little narrow chunks of the solution," he said.
