Zigbee Zooms To Market.doc

Zigbee Zooms To Market This short-range wireless technology is now ready for action in your application. Feb. 21, 2006 Ushering in a new technology or standard to the market always seems to take longer than expected. In fact, the time between concept and actual adoption often can be measured with a stack of calendars. ZigBee is no exception. For years now, followers of wireless technology have heard about the enormous effort to develop the ZigBee standard and its applications. Now that the silicon and software are available, we can expect real-world products this year. While the entire development cycle was shorter than that of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, lots of work was poured into the effort to reach this point. Today, ZigBee is ready for those designers who have waited to add wireless to their designs. Consider how long it took Bluetooth to become successful. Today, Bluetooth is everywhere—cell phones, headsets, laptops, PDAs, and peripheral devices. Its so common, its taken for granted—a telltale sign of success. According to Mike Foley, director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), over 500 million Bluetooth chips have been shipped to date, and the current ship rate is 9.5 million chips per week. Does ZigBee have that potential? Bob Heile, the ZigBee Alliances chairman, thinks so. In fact, its overall potential may be greater. IEEE 802.15.4 Standard 101 ZigBee is the nickname for a short-range wireless technology used for personal-area networks (PANs). Its based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and guidelines developed by the ZigBee Alliance. The IEEE standard defines the physical layer (PHY) and mediaaccess-control (MAC) layer of the radio. The ZigBee standard effectively extends from that, covering the network and security layers of the protocol, as well as application frameworks and profiles (Fig. 1). The ZigBee Alliance also has established a testing and certification program to ensure interoperability between products from different ZigBee