ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low-power digital radios based on the

IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standard for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LRWPANs), such as wireless light switches with lamps, electrical meters with in-home-displays, consumer electronics equipment via short-range radio needing low rates of data transfer. The technology defined by the ZigBee specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other WPANs, such as Bluetooth. ZigBee is targeted at radio-frequency (RF) applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking.

Technical overview
ZigBee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard. First, the low cost allows the technology to be widely deployed in wireless control and monitoring applications. Second, the low power-usage allows longer life with smaller batteries. Third, the mesh networking provides high reliability and more extensive range. It is not capable of powerline networking though other elements of the OpenHAN standards suite promoted by openAMI [1] and UtilityAMI [2] deal with communications co-extant with AC power outlets. In other words, ZigBee is intended not to support powerline networking but to interface with it at least for smart metering and smart appliance purposes. Utilities, e.g. Penn Energy, have declared the intent to require them to interoperate [3] again via the openHAN standards.

[edit] Trademark and Alliance

The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, costeffective, and low-power wirelessly networked monitoring and control products based on an open global standard.[1] The ZigBee Alliance is a group of companies that maintain and publish the ZigBee standard. The term ZigBee is a registered trademark of this group, not a single technical standard.

As per its main role, it standardizes the body that defines ZigBee, and also publishes application profiles that allow multiple OEM vendors to create interoperable products. The current list of application profiles either published, or in the works are:

[edit] Released specifications

y y y y

ZigBee Home Automation ZigBee Smart Energy 1.0 ZigBee Telecommunication Services ZigBee Health Care

ZigBee Remote Control

[edit] Specifications under development

y y y

ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 ZigBee Building Automation ZigBee Retail Services

The relationship between IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee[2] is similar to that between IEEE 802.11 and the Wi-Fi Alliance. The ZigBee 1.0 specification was ratified on 14 December 2004 and is available to members of the ZigBee Alliance. Most recently, the ZigBee 2007 specification was posted on 30 October 2007. The first ZigBee Application Profile, Home Automation, was announced 2 November 2007. As amended by NIST, the Smart Energy Profile 2.0 specification will remove the dependency on IEEE 802.15.4. Device manufacturers will be able to implement any MAC/PHY, such as IEEE 802.15.4(x) and IEEE P1901, under an IP layer based on 6LoWPAN. ZigBee operates in the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands; 868 MHz in Europe, 915 MHz in the USA and Australia, and 2.4 GHz in most jurisdictions worldwide. The technology is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other WPANs such as Bluetooth. ZigBee chip vendors typically sell integrated radios and microcontrollers with between 60 KB and 256 KB flash memory.

[edit] Chip vendors/devices include

y y y y y y y y y

Atmel ATmega128RFA1 Digi International XBee XB24CZ7PIS-004 Freescale MC13213 Ember EM250 Jennic JN5148 Renesas uPD78F8056/57/58, M16C/6B3 and R8C/3MQ STMicroelectronics STM32W Samsung Electro-Mechanics ZBS240 Texas Instruments CC2530 and CC2520

Radios are also available as stand-alone components to be used with any processor or microcontroller. Generally, the chip vendors also offer the ZigBee software stack, although independent ones are also available. Because ZigBee can activate (go from sleep to active mode) in 30 msec or less, the latency can be very low and devices can be very responsive particularly compared to Bluetooth wake-up delays, which are typically around three seconds. [3] Because ZigBees can sleep most of the time, average power consumption can be very low, resulting in long battery life.

The first stack release is now called ZigBee 2004. The second stack release is called ZigBee 2006, and mainly replaces the MSG/KVP structure used in 2004 with a "cluster library". The 2004 stack is now more or less obsolete.[citation needed] ZigBee 2007, now the current stack release, contains two stack profiles, stack profile 1 (simply called ZigBee), for home and light commercial use, and stack profile 2 (called ZigBee Pro). ZigBee Pro offers more features, such as multi-casting, many-to-one routing and high security with Symmetric-Key Key Exchange (SKKE), while ZigBee (stack profile 1) offers a smaller footprint in RAM and flash. Both offer full mesh networking and work with all ZigBee application profiles.[citation needed] ZigBee 2007 is fully backward compatible with ZigBee 2006 devices: A ZigBee 2007 device may join and operate on a ZigBee 2006 network and vice versa. Due to differences in routing options, ZigBee Pro devices must become non-routing ZigBee End-Devices (ZEDs) on a ZigBee 2006 network, the same as for ZigBee 2006 devices on a ZigBee 2007 network must become ZEDs on a ZigBee Pro network. The applications running on those devices work the same, regardless of the stack profile beneath them.

[edit] Licensing
For non-commercial purposes, the ZigBee specification is available free to the general public.[4] An entry level membership in the ZigBee Alliance, called Adopter, provides access to the as-yet unpublished specifications and permission to create products for market using the specifications. The click through license on the ZigBee specification requires a commercial developer to join the ZigBee Alliance. "No part of this specification may be used in development of a product for sale without becoming a member of ZigBee Alliance." This causes problems for open-source developers because the annual fee conflicts with the GNU General Public License. From the GPL v2, "b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." Since the GPL makes no distinction between commercial and non-commercial use it is impossible to implement a GPL licensed ZigBee stack or combine a ZigBee implementation with GPL licensed code. The requirement for the developer to join the ZigBee Alliance similarly conflicts with most other Free software licenses.[5]

[edit] Uses
ZigBee protocols are intended for use in embedded applications requiring low data rates and low power consumption. ZigBee's current focus is to define a general-purpose, inexpensive, selforganizing mesh network that can be used for industrial control, embedded sensing, medical data collection, smoke and intruder warning, building automation, home automation, etc. The resulting network will use very small amounts of power individual devices must have a battery life of at least two years to pass ZigBee certification.[6]

Typical application areas include[7]

y

Home Entertainment and Control Smart lighting, advanced temperature control, safety and security, movies and music Wireless Sensor Networks' Starting with individual sensors like Telosb/Tmote and Iris from Memsic.

[edit] Device types

There are three different types of ZigBee devices:
y

y y

ZigBee coordinator (ZC): The most capable device, the coordinator forms the root of the network tree and might bridge to other networks. There is exactly one ZigBee coordinator in each network since it is the device that started the network originally. It is able to store information about the network, including acting as the Trust Center & repository for security keys[8][9]. ZigBee Router (ZR): As well as running an application function, a router can act as an intermediate router, passing on data from other devices. ZigBee End Device (ZED): Contains just enough functionality to talk to the parent node (either the coordinator or a router); it cannot relay data from other devices. This relationship allows the node to be asleep a significant amount of the time thereby giving long battery life. A ZED requires the least amount of memory, and therefore can be less expensive to manufacture than a ZR or ZC.

[edit] Protocols
The protocols build on recent algorithmic research (Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector, neuRFon) to automatically construct a low-speed ad-hoc network of nodes. In most large network instances, the network will be a cluster of clusters. It can also form a mesh or a single cluster. The current profiles derived from the ZigBee protocols support beacon and non-beacon enabled networks. In non-beacon-enabled networks (those whose beacon order is 15), an unslotted CSMA/CA channel access mechanism is used. In this type of network, ZigBee Routers typically have their receivers continuously active, requiring a more robust power supply. However, this allows for heterogeneous networks in which some devices receive continuously, while others only transmit when an external stimulus is detected. The typical example of a heterogeneous network is a wireless light switch: The ZigBee node at the lamp may receive constantly, since it is connected to the mains supply, while a battery-powered light switch would remain asleep until the switch is thrown. The switch then wakes up, sends a command to the lamp, receives an acknowledgment, and returns to sleep. In such a network the lamp node will be at least a ZigBee Router, if not the ZigBee Coordinator; the switch node is typically a ZigBee End Device.

In beacon-enabled networks, the special network nodes called ZigBee Routers transmit periodic beacons to confirm their presence to other network nodes. Nodes may sleep between beacons, thus lowering their duty cycle and extending their battery life. Beacon intervals may range from 15.36 milliseconds to 15.36 ms * 214 = 251.65824 seconds at 250 kbit/s, from 24 milliseconds to 24 ms * 214 = 393.216 seconds at 40 kbit/s and from 48 milliseconds to 48 ms * 214 = 786.432 seconds at 20 kbit/s. However, low duty cycle operation with long beacon intervals requires precise timing, which can conflict with the need for low product cost. In general, the ZigBee protocols minimize the time the radio is on so as to reduce power use. In beaconing networks, nodes only need to be active while a beacon is being transmitted. In nonbeacon-enabled networks, power consumption is decidedly asymmetrical: some devices are always active, while others spend most of their time sleeping. Except for the Smart Energy Profile 2.0, which will be MAC/PHY agnostic, ZigBee devices are required to conform to the IEEE 802.15.4-2003 Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) standard. The standard specifies the lower protocol layersthe physical layer (PHY), and the media access control (MAC) portion of the data link layer (DLL). This standard specifies operation in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz (worldwide), 915 MHz (Americas) and 868 MHz (Europe) ISM bands. In the 2.4 GHz band there are 16 ZigBee channels, with each channel requiring 5 MHz of bandwidth. The center frequency for each channel can be calculated as, FC = (2405 + 5 * (ch - 11)) MHz, where ch = 11, 12, ..., 26. The radios use direct-sequence spread spectrum coding, which is managed by the digital stream into the modulator. BPSK is used in the 868 and 915 MHz bands, and OQPSK that transmits four bits per symbol is used in the 2.4 GHz band. The raw, over-the-air data rate is 250 kbit/s per channel in the 2.4 GHz band, 40 kbit/s per channel in the 915 MHz band, and 20 kbit/s in the 868 MHz band. Transmission range is between 10 and 75 meters (33 and 246 feet) and up to 1500 meters for zigbee pro, although it is heavily dependent on the particular environment. The output power of the radios is generally 0 dBm (1 mW). The basic channel access mode is "carrier sense, multiple access/collision avoidance" (CSMA/CA). That is, the nodes talk in the same way that people converse; they briefly check to see that no one is talking before they start. There are three notable exceptions to the use of CSMA. Beacons are sent on a fixed timing schedule, and do not use CSMA. Message acknowledgments also do not use CSMA. Finally, devices in Beacon Oriented networks that have low latency real-time requirements may also use Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS), which by definition do not use CSMA.

[edit] ZigBee RF4CE

On March 3, 2009 the RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls. ZigBee RF4CE is designed to be deployed in a wide range of remotely-controlled audio/visual consumer electronics products, such as TVs and set-top boxes. It promises many advantages over existing remote control solutions, including richer

communication and increased reliability, enhanced features and flexibility, interoperability, and no line-of-sight barrier.[10]

[edit] Software and hardware

The software is designed to be easy to develop on small, inexpensive microprocessors. The radio design used by ZigBee has been carefully optimized for low cost in large scale production. It has few analog stages and uses digital circuits wherever possible. Even though the radios themselves are inexpensive, the ZigBee Qualification Process involves a full validation of the requirements of the physical layer. This amount of concern about the Physical Layer has multiple benefits, since all radios derived from that semiconductor mask set would enjoy the same RF characteristics. On the other hand, an uncertified physical layer that malfunctions could cripple the battery lifespan of other devices on a ZigBee network. Where other protocols can mask poor sensitivity or other esoteric problems in a fade compensation response, ZigBee radios have very tight engineering constraints: they are both power and bandwidth constrained. Thus, radios are tested to the ISO 17025 standard with guidance given by Clause 6 of the 802.15.4-2006 Standard. Most vendors plan to integrate the radio and microcontroller onto a single chip [4] getting smaller devices [5].

[edit] History
y

y y

ZigBee-style networks began to be conceived around 1998, when many installers realized that both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were going to be unsuitable for many applications. In particular, many engineers[by whom?] saw a need for self-organizing ad-hoc digital radio networks.[citation needed] The IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standard was completed in May 2003 and has been superseded by the publication of IEEE 802.15.4-2006. [6] In the summer of 2003, Philips Semiconductors, a major mesh network supporter, ceased the investment. Philips Lighting has, however, continued Philips' participation, and Philips remains a promoter member on the ZigBee Alliance Board of Directors.[citation
needed]

y y y

The ZigBee Alliance announced in October 2004 that the membership had more than doubled in the preceding year and had grown to more than 100 member companies, in 22 countries. By April 2005 membership had grown to more than 150 companies, and by December 2005 membership had passed 200 companies.[citation needed] The ZigBee specifications were ratified on 14 December 2004.[citation needed] The ZigBee Alliance announces public availability of Specification 1.0 on 13 June 2005, known as ZigBee 2004 Specification. The ZigBee Alliance announces the completion and immediate member availability of the enhanced version of the ZigBee Standard in September 2006, known as ZigBee 2006 Specification. During the last quarter of 2007, ZigBee PRO, the enhanced ZigBee specification was finalized.[citation needed]

[edit] Origin of the ZigBee name

The name of the brand is originated with reference to the behaviour of honey bees after their return to the beehive.[citation needed]

What is ZigBee?
ZigBee is a home-area network designed specifically to replace the proliferation of individual remote controls. ZigBee was created to satisfy the market's need for a cost-effective, standards-based wireless network that supports low data rates, low power consumption, security, and reliability. To address this need, the ZigBee Alliance, an industry working group (www.zigbee.org), is developing standardized application software on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard. The alliance is working closely with the IEEE to ensure an integrated, complete, and interoperable network for the market. For example, the working group will provide interoperability certification testing of 802.15.4 systems that include the ZigBee software layer. The ZigBee Alliance will also serve as the official test and certification group for ZigBee devices. ZigBee is the only standards-based technology that addresses the needs of most remote monitoring and control and sensory network applications.

Figure 1: ZigBee stack architecture It may be helpful to think of IEEE 802.15.4 as the physical radio and ZigBee as the logical network and application software, as Figure 1 illustrates. Following the standard Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model, ZigBee's protocol stack is structured in layers. The first two layers, physical (PHY) and media access (MAC), are defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The layers above them are defined by the ZigBee Alliance. The IEEE working group passed the first draft of PHY and MAC in 2003. A final version of the network (NWK) layer is expected sometime this year. ZigBee-compliant products operate in unlicensed bands worldwide, including 2.4GHz (global), 902 to 928MHz (Americas), and 868MHz (Europe). Raw data throughput rates of 250Kbps can be achieved at 2.4GHz (16 channels), 40Kbps at 915MHz (10 channels), and 20Kbps at 868MHz (1 channel). The transmission distance is expected to range from 10 to 75m, depending on power output and environmental characteristics. Like Wi-Fi, Zigbee uses direct-sequence spread spectrum in the 2.4GHz band, with offset-quadrature phase-shift keying modulation. Channel width is 2MHz with 5MHz channel spacing. The 868 and 900MHz bands also use direct-sequence spread spectrum but with binary-phase-shift keying modulation.

Frame structure
Figure 2 illustrates the four basic frame types defined in 802.15.4: data, ACK, MAC command, and beacon.

Figure 2: The four basic frame types defined in 802.15.4: Data, ACK, MAC command, and beacon The data frame provides a payload of up to 104 bytes. The frame is numbered to ensure that all packets are tracked. A frame-check sequence ensures that packets are received without error. This frame structure improves reliability in difficult conditions. Another important structure for 802.15.4 is the acknowledgment (ACK) frame. It provides feedback from the receiver to the sender confirming that the packet was received without error. The device takes advantage of specified "quiet time" between frames to send a short packet immediately after the data-packet transmission. A MAC command frame provides the mechanism for remote control and configuration of client nodes. A centralized network manager uses MAC to configure individual clients' command frames no matter how large the network. Finally, the beacon frame wakes up client devices, which listen for their address and go back to sleep if they don't receive it. Beacons are important for mesh and cluster-tree networks to keep all the nodes synchronized without requiring those nodes to consume precious battery energy by listening for long periods of time.

Channel access, addressing

Two channel-access mechanisms are implemented in 802.15.4. For a non"beacon network, a standard ALOHA CSMA-CA (carrier-sense medium-access with collision avoidance) communicates with positive acknowledgement for successfully received packets. In a beacon-enabled network, a superframe structure is used to control channel access. The superframe is set up by the network coordinator to transmit beacons at predetermined intervals (multiples of 15.38ms, up to 252s) and provides 16 equal-width time slots between beacons for contention-free channel access in each time slot. The structure guarantees dedicated bandwidth and low latency. Channel access in each time slot is contention-based. However, the network coordinator can dedicate up to seven guaranteed time slots per beacon interval for quality of service. Device addresses employ 64-bit IEEE and optional 16-bit short addressing. The address field within the MAC can contain both source and destination address information (needed for peer-to-peer operation). This dual address information is used in mesh networks to prevent a single point of failure within the network.

Device types
ZigBee networks use three device types: y The network coordinator maintains overall network knowledge. It's the most sophisticated of the three types and requires the most memory and computing power. The full function device (FFD) supports all 802.15.4 functions and features specified by the standard. It can function as a network coordinator. Additional memory and computing power make it ideal for network router functions or it could be used in network-edge devices (where the network touches the real world).

The reduced function device (RFD) carries limited (as specified by the standard) functionality to lower cost and complexity. It's generally found in network-edge devices.

Power and beacons

Ultra-low power consumption is how ZigBee technology promotes a long lifetime for devices with nonrechargeable batteries. ZigBee networks are designed to conserve the power of the slave nodes. For most of the time, a slave device is in deep-sleep mode and wakes up only for a fraction of a second to confirm its presence in the network. For example, the transition from sleep mode to data transition is around 15ms and new slave enumeration typically takes just 30ms. ZigBee networks can use beacon or non-beacon environments. Beacons are used to synchronize the network devices, identify the HAN, and describe the structure of the superframe. The beacon intervals are set by the network coordinator and vary from 15ms to over 4 minutes. Sixteen equal time slots are allocated between beacons for message delivery. The channel access in each time slot is contention-based. However, the network coordinator can dedicate up to seven guaranteed time slots for noncontention based or lowlatency delivery. The non-beacon mode is a simple, traditional multiple-access system used in simple peer and near-peer networks. It operates like a two-way radio network, where each client is autonomous and can initiate a conversation at will, but could interfere with others unintentionally. The recipient may not hear the call or the channel might already be in use. Beacon mode is a mechanism for controlling power consumption in extended networks such as cluster tree or mesh. It enables all the clients to know when to communicate with each other. Here, the two-way radio network has a central dispatcher that manages the channel and arranges the calls. The primary value of beacon mode is that it reduces the system's power consumption. Non-beacon mode is typically used for security systems where client units, such as intrusion sensors, motion detectors, and glass-break detectors, sleep 99.999% of the time. Remote units wake up on a regular, yet random, basis to announce their continued presence in the network. When an event occurs, the sensor wakes up instantly and transmits the alert ("Somebody's on the front porch"). The network coordinator, powered from the main source, has its receiver on all the time and can therefore wait to hear from each of these stations. Since the network coordinator has an "infinite" source of power it can allow clients to sleep for unlimited periods of time, enabling them to save power. Beacon mode is more suitable when the network coordinator is battery-operated. Client units listen for the network coordinator's beacon (broadcast at intervals between 0.015 and 252s). A client registers with the coordinator and looks for any messages directed to it. If no messages are pending, the client returns to sleep, awaking on a schedule specified by the coordinator. Once the client communications are completed, the coordinator itself returns to sleep. This timing requirement may have an impact on the cost of the timing circuit in each end device. Longer intervals of sleep mean that the timer must be more accurate or turn on earlier to make sure that the beacon is heard, both of which will increase receiver power consumption. Longer sleep intervals also mean the timer must improve the quality of the

timing oscillator circuit (which increases cost) or control the maximum period of time between beacons to not exceed 252s, keeping oscillator circuit costs low.

Security
Security and data integrity are key benefits of the ZigBee technology. ZigBee leverages the security model of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC sublayer which specifies four security services: y y y y access controlthe device maintains a list of trusted devices within the network data encryption, which uses symmetric key 128-bit advanced encryption standard frame integrity to protect data from being modified by parties without cryptographic keys sequential freshness to reject data frames that have been replayedthe network controller compares the freshness value with the last known value from the device and rejects it if the freshness value has not been updated to a new value

The actual security implementation is specified by the implementer using a standardized toolbox of ZigBee security software.

Network layer
The NWK layer associates or dissociates devices using the network coordinator, implements security, and routes frames to their intended destination. In addition, the NWK layer of the network coordinator is responsible for starting a new network and assigning an address to newly associated devices. The NWK layer supports multiple network topologies including star, cluster tree, and mesh, all of which are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: ZigBee network model In a star topology, one of the FFD-type devices assumes the role of network coordinator and is responsible for initiating and maintaining the devices on the network. All other devices, known as end devices, directly communicate with the coordinator. In a mesh topology, the ZigBee coordinator is responsible for starting the network and for choosing key network parameters, but the network may be extended through the use of ZigBee routers. The routing algorithm uses a request-response protocol to eliminate suboptimal routing. Ultimate network size can reach 264 nodes (more than we'll probably need). Using local addressing, you can configure simple networks of more than 65,000 (216) nodes, thereby reducing address overhead. The General Operation Framework (GOF) is a glue layer between applications and rest of the protocol stack. The GOF currently covers various elements that are common for all devices. It includes subaddressing and addressing modes and device descriptions, such as type of device, power source, sleep modes, and coordinators. Using an object model, the GOF specifies methods, events, and data formats that are used by application profiles to construct set/get commands and their responses. Actual application profiles are defined in the individual profiles of the IEEE's working groups. Each ZigBee device can support up to 30 different profiles. Currently, only one profile,

Commercial and Residential Lighting, is defined. It includes switching and dimming load controllers, corresponding remote-control devices, and occupancy and light sensors. The ZigBee stack is small in comparison to other wireless standards. For network-edge devices with limited capabilities, the stack requires about 4Kb of the memory. Full implementation of the protocol stack takes less than 32Kb of memory. The network coordinator may require extra RAM for a node devices database and for transaction and pairing tables. The 802.15.4 standard defines 26 primitives for the PHY and MAC layers; probably another dozen will be added after finalizing the NWK layer specification. Those numbers are still modest compared to 131 primitives defined for Bluetooth. Such a compact footprint enables you to run Zigbee on a simple 8-bit microcontroller such as an HC08- or 8051-based processor core.

Figure 4: A typical ZigBee-enabled device will consist of RF IC and 8-bit microprocessor with peripherals connected to an application sensor or actuators As Figure 4 shows, a typical ZigBee-enabled device includes a radio frequency integrated circuit (RF IC) with a partially implemented PHY layer connected to a low-power, lowvoltage 8-bit microcontroller with peripherals, connected to an application sensor or actuators. The protocol stack and application firmware reside in on-chip flash memory. The entire ZigBee device can be compact and cost efficient. Motorola and Atmel already offer a set of RF ICs and microcontrollers for ZigBee. Chipcon is sampling 802.15.4-compliant RF ICs for the 2.4GHz band. Currently, a ZigBee chip set costs about $7, but that price should fall to $2 after market acceptance. Studies suggest that it will happen in the new few years. It may take a year or more to determine how much ZigBee will be accepted in the market.

Consulting the crystal ball

IEEE 802.15.4 is a new standard that still needs to pass through the circles of rigorous technology critics and establish its own place in the industry. Predictions for the future of ZigBee-enabled devices are a popular topic for numerous market-research firms. But as with any crystal ball reading, the results of those analyses are subject to interpretation. While I intend to stay objective, I believe, based on protocol features implemented in 802.15.4, that ZigBee has a bright future. Backed by IEEE, ZigBee has the potential to unify methods of data communication for sensors, actuators, appliances, and asset-tracking devices. It offers a means to build a reliable but affordable network backbone that takes advantage of battery-operated devices with a low data rate and a low duty cycle. ZigBee can be used in many applications, from industrial automation, utility metering, and building control to even toys. Home automation, however, is the biggest market for ZigBee-enabled devices. This follows from the number of remote controlled devices (or devices that may be connected wirelessly) in the average household. This cost-effective and easy-to-use home network potentially creates a whole new ecosystem of interconnected home appliances, light and climate control systems, and security and sensor subnetworks. Mikhail Galeev is a senior engineer at Motorola with seven years experience in firmware design for embedded systems. He holds a BS in applied physics from Rostov State University, Russia, and an MSEE from the University of South Alabama, Mobile. You may reach him at Mikhail.Galeev@motorola.com.

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