Internet of Things

ZigBee Technology
ZigBee Standard: https://csa-iot.org/all-solutions/zigbee/

Thanks to Dr. Manas Khatua

 IoT Access Technologies
• there are many IoT technologies in the market today

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 Need of ZigBee
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are used to connect devices
but not suitable for IoT applications.
• IoT applications require
– Battery operated devices
– Large number of connected device

• Wi-Fi working on IEEE 802.11 have high power

consumption.

• Bluetooth network commonly known as Piconets,

uses point-to-point connection. One master node
can connect maximum up to 7 salve nodes.

• Need of something that can meet both

requirements of IoT.
– Solution is the Zigbee.

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 IEEE 802.15.4
• IEEE 802.15.4-2003 is a wireless Access Technology for
 low-cost and low-data-rate devices
 devices powered by batteries

• It enables easy installation using a compact protocol stack

• Several network communication stacks leverage this technology for many IoT
use cases in both the consumer and business markets.
– ZigBee / ZigBee IP
– 6LoWPAN
– WirelessHART
– Thread
– 6TiSCH

• ZigBee shows how 802.15.4 can be leveraged (at the PHY & MAC)
independent of the protocol layers above.

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 ZigBee
• First ZigBee specification was ZigBee-2004
ZigBee in Digi’s
• ZigBee technology follows Xbee radio module
– Low data rate
– Low power consumption
– Low cost
– Wireless networking
– Mesh networking topology

• Well-known application domains:

Industrial and Commercial Smart Home Smart Energy or Utility

Automation Applications Applications
measuring temperature control lighting, monitor and control the use
and humidity, and tracking thermostats, and and delivery of utilities, such
assets security functions as electricity and water

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 Other ZigBee Applications
monitors TV VCR
sensors DVD/CD
automation Remote control
control
INDUSTRIAL & CONSUMER
COMMERCIAL ELECTRONICS

monitors mouse
diagnostics ZigBee keyboard
sensors LOW DATA-RATE joystick
PC &
RADIO DEVICES PERIPHERALS
PERSONAL
HEALTH CARE

security
consoles HVAC
portables lighting
educational TOYS & HOME closures
GAMES AUTOMATION

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 ZigBee Protocol Stack
IEEE and ZigBee Alliance jointly specifies the entire ZigBee protocol stack for
communication
 IEEE 802.15.4 focuses on the specification of the lower two layers of the
protocol (physical and data link layer)

 ZigBee Alliance aims to provide the upper layers of the protocol stack (from
network to the application layer)

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 ZigBee Alliance
• An alliance of organizations with a • Alliance provides
mission to define – interoperable data networking,
– reliable, – interoperability compliance testing,
– branding or marketing of the standard,
– cost effective, – a range of wireless home and building
– low-power, control solutions,
– wirelessly networked, – security services
– monitoring and control products – advanced engineering for the evolution of
the standard
– based on an open global standard

• ZigBee Alliance
 45+ companies: Semiconductor mfrs, IP providers, OEMs, etc.

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 Device Type
• The most basic component of a ZigBee system is the device

– A device can be a full-function device (FFD) or reduced-function device (RFD).

– The FFD can operate in three modes:

• a personal area network (PAN) coordinator
• a coordinator
• a device.
– An FFD can talk to RFDs or FFDs.
– An RFD can only talk to an FFD.

A network shall include at

least one FFD, operating
as the PAN coordinator.

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 Network Topologies
Three types of topologies that ZigBee supports:
 Star topology
 communication is established between devices and a single central controller (PAN coordinator).
 each start network has an unique PAN identifier

 Peer-to-peer topology
 there is also one PAN coordinator
 unlike star, any device can communicate with any other device if they are in range of one another
 peer-to-peer network can be ad hoc, self-organizing and self-healing
 It allows multiple hops to route messages from any device to any other device in the network.
 It can provide reliability by multipath routing

 Cluster tree
 Cluster-tree network is a special case of a peer-to-peer network
 The PAN coordinator forms the first cluster by establishing itself as the cluster head (CLH)
 Devices join successively in multi-hop fashion i.e. successive clusters
 If required, PAN coordinator may instruct a device to become the CLH of a new cluster

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 IEEE 802.15.4 PHY Layer
IEEE 802.15.4 PHY provides the PHY data service and PHY management services.
• The PHY data service enables the transmission and reception of PHY protocol data units (PPDU)
across the physical radio channel.

Preamble (4 byte): identifies the start of the frame;

used to synchronize the data transmission

SFD (1 byte): informs the receiver about the starting

PPDU Frame Format point of frame content

Services of PHY
• Transmission options
• radio transceiver activation/deactivation, – 2.4 GHz, with a data rate ~ 250 kbps
• radio channel selection, – 915 MHz, with a data rate ~ 40 kbps
• energy level detection (ED) , – 868 MHz, with a data rate ~ 20 kbps
• received signal quality (RSI) or link quality
indicator (LQI), • Modulation schemes
• clear channel assessment (CCA), – Offset quadrature phase-shift keying (O-QPSK)
• transmitting and receiving packets in 2.4-GHz – Binary phase-shift keying (BPSK)
band. – Amplitude shift keying (ASK)

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 Key Features of ZigBee PHY
• Energy Detection (ED)
– It is an estimate of the received signal power within the bandwidth of an IEEE 802.15.4 channel.
– No attempt is made to identify or decode signals on the channel.
– The ED time should be equal to 8 symbol periods.
– The ED result shall be reported as an 8-bit integer
– The ED measurement is intended for use by a network layer as part of channel selection algorithm.

• Link Quality Indication (LQI)

– The LQI measurement is a characterization of the strength and/or quality of a received packet.
– The measurement may be implemented using receiver ED, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation
or a combination of these methods.
– The LQI shall be reported as an 8-bit integer
– The use of LQI result is up to the network or application layers.

• Clear Channel Assessment (CCA)

– CCA is performed according to at least one of the following three methods:
• Energy above ED threshold.
• Carrier sense only (i.e. based upon the detection of a signal with modulation and spreading characteristics)
• Carrier sense with energy above ED threshold.

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 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer
 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC provides the MAC data service and MAC management services.

 The MAC data service enables transmission of MAC protocol data units (MPDU) across the PHY data service.

 The MAC sublayer features include

 beacon management,
 channel access,
 GTS management, A Guaranteed Time Slot
 frame validation,
 ACK frame delivery, and 16-bit short address
 association and disassociation.
OR
64-bit extended address
media access control

• MAC frame types:

• Data frame
• Beacon frame
personal area network • ACK frame
• Command frame

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 MAC Features
• Superframe Structure for data transmission
• Beacon Generation

• Slotted / Unslotted CSMA-CA as channel access mechanism

• Starting and Maintaining PANs
• Association and Disassociation
• Synchronization
• GTS Allocation and Management

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 ZigBee Routing Layer
• Routing Algorithms: (i) AODV, (ii) Cluster Tree Algorithm, (iii) Few others….
• AODV (Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector)
– It is a pure on-demand route acquisition algorithm
• Nodes do not lie on active paths, neither maintain any routing information nor participate
in any periodic routing table exchanges
• A node does not discover and maintain a route to another node until the two need to
communicate

• RREQ is broadcasted
• RREP is unicasted

• Routing table entry:

• Dest. Node
• Next Hop
• No. of hops
• Seq. no. for the dest.
• Active neighbours for
this route / dest.
Route Request Packet = {source addr, source seq. no., broadcast id, • Expiration time
dest. addr, dest. seq. no., hop count}
Route Reply Packet = {source addr, dest. addr, dest. seq. no., hop count, lifetime}
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 ZigBee Application Layer
• The Application Layer in Zigbee architecture consists of
sub layers namely:
 Application Support Sub Layer
 Application Framework
 Zigbee Device Object

• Application Support sub layer (APS) responsible for :

 Maintaining binding tables

 Binding is the connection between the endpoint on a node to
one or more endpoints on other nodes.

 Address definition, mapping and management.

 address mapping associates a 64-bit MAC address with a
ZigBee 16-bit Network address.

 Filtering out packets

 Coming form non-registered end devices, or
 device profiles that don’t match

 Reassembling of the packets.

 Providing data service to the applications

 Performs automatic retries wherever applicable

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Cont…
• Application Framework
 Provides a framework for building and running
application

 It describes how to build an application profile on

to the zigbee stack for an application

 End points are provided with mechanism to

distinguish one application from another.

• ZigBee device object

 Defining role of a device within a network

 provides local network management and over-the-

At the application level, the standardization of air (OTA) network management
functionality is addressed per market sector
through application profiles (e.g., Home  provides services to discover other nodes &
Automation, Smart Energy, Health Care), with services in the same network automatically
the aim of allowing interoperability.

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 ZigBee Cluster Library
ZigBee Cluster Library (ZCL) is introduced in ZigBee-2006.

The ZCL is intended to act as a repository for cluster

functionality that is developed by ZigBee

Need of ZCL: A developer constructing a new application

SHOULD use the ZCL to find relevant cluster functionality
that can be incorporated into the new application so as
not to “re-invent the wheel”

Examples of ZCL
• Door Lock Cluster : provides an interface to set values representing the states of door lock.
• Thermostat Cluster : provides an interface for configuring and controlling the functionality
of a thermostat.
• Fan Control Cluster : used to control the speed of a fan
• Temperature Measurement Cluster : provides an interface to an temperature measuring
device, allowing the configuration of measuring and the reporting of measurements.

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ZigBee PRO
ZigBee PRO is the enhanced version of ZigBee-2006.
Initially published in 2007.

ZigBee PRO Features:

• Multi-band communication across 2.4GHz and
sub-GHz bands with multi PHY support

• Incorporates power saving mechanisms for all

device classes,

• Discovery mechanism , Pairing mechanism with full application confirmation

• Various transmission options -- broadcast, groupcast and unicast

• Security key generation mechanism

• Utilizes the industry standard AES-128 security scheme

• Sub-GHz channels transmission ranges up to 1km.

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 ZigBee IP
• Initially, ZigBee did not provide interoperability with
other IoT solutions or open standards

• ZigBee IP was created to embrace the open

standards at the Network and Transport layers

• Open standards designed by IETF’s work on LLNs,

such as 6LoWPAN and RPL.

• ZigBee IP optimizes the standard for IPv6-based full

wireless mesh networks, offering internet
connections to control low-power, low-cost devices.

• ZigBee IP routes standard IPv6 traffic over IEEE • ZigBee IP nodes support
802.15.4 using 6LoWPAN header compression.  IPv6,
 ICMPv6,
 6LoWPAN,
 Neighbour Discovery (ND), and
 RPL for the routing of packets.

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 ZigBee RF4CE
• In 2009, the Radio Frequency for Consumer
Electronics (RF4CE) consortium and ZigBee
Alliance agreed to deliver jointly a standard
for radio frequency remote controls

• consumer electronics products, such as TVs

and set-top boxes.

• Advantages:
– richer communication,
– increased reliability,
– enhanced features and flexibility,
– interoperability,
– no line-of-sight barrier,
– can run on smaller memory configurations
in lower-cost devices

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 ZigBee Green Power
• Zigbee Green Power (ZGP) is included
in the Zigbee specification

• ZGP enables battery-less (energy-

harvesting) or ultra-long battery
devices to securely join Zigbee PRO
networks.

• Common ZGP devices include

switches, sensors, detectors, and
buttons.

• ZGP uses a new compact packet

format that minimizes the amount of
energy used to transmit data

• GPDF (Green Power Device Frame) is shorter than a standard ZigBee frame. This allows a GPD
(Green Power Device) to transmit a GPDF using less power than a standard ZigBee frame.

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 ZigBee 3.0
• Aims to break the barriers between low-
power wireless devices from different
market sectors, to allow fully integrated
networks as well as Internet connectivity

• So, it removes restrictions that prevent

nodes in different application areas from
participating in the same network.

• ZigBee 3.0 redefines ZigBee PRO to allow

increased interoperability

• ZigBee 3.0 provides enhanced network

security
The ZigBee 3.0 software stack incorporates
• ZigBee 3.0 supports with large local a ‘base device’ feature that provides
networks of greater than 250 nodes. consistent behaviour for commissioning
nodes into a network.

Source: https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/brochure/75017677.pdf

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