SAN RAMON, Calif. — The main proponents of the ZigBee low-power, short-distance wireless connectivity technology have formed a not-for-profit alliance to drive further development and deployment of the technology.
The four companies in the ZigBee Alliance are Philips, Mitsubishi, Motorola and Invensys. Ten other companies are said to be closely involved in the Alliance, and 15 others are developing technology or products based on the standard.
The ZigBee standard specifies data transfers at rates of a few hundred bits per second. The spec is being developed for use in consumer electronics, home and building automation, industrial controls, PC peripherals, medical sensor applications, toys and games.
A ZigBee network can support up to 254 client nodes plus one full functional device, or master. The protocol is optimized for very long battery life measured in months to years and can control lighting, air conditioning, smoke and fire alarms, and other security devices. The standard supports 2.4-GHz transmissions worldwide, 868-MHz in Europe and 915-MHz in the Americas operating in unlicensed radio bands with a range of up to 75 meters, but more typically between 10 and 20 meters.
"We see a wide range of benefits in having a single standard that provides the wireless protocol and targeted software applications for this diverse marketplace," said Behrooz Abdi, vice president and general manager of Motorola's radio products division, in a statement. "ZigBee and the underlying IEEE 802.15.4 standard are a natural fit within Motorola's portfolio of wireless ICs and embedded controller technologies."
The IEEE is working on standardizing the physical layer and media-access controller (MAC) for ZigBee, while members of the Alliance are working on software stacks and the upper layers. Some of the companies have said they expect to sample chip sets for the connectivity standard by the middle of next year.
