ZigBee wireless communication technology
Published: 2023-09-16 09:56:48


Hello Readers,
My name is Sharanabasava, and I work as a junior software engineer at Luxoft India. I'm happy to share this post, in which I relate my previous experience with ZigBee wireless communication technology. 


**Introduction**-With radio frequency technology and wireless broadband technology and the development of sensor technology, the advent of the era of Internet of things, from the traditional video monitoring system has been monitoring to monitoring based on wireless sensor network (WSN), different functions of sensor outside all kinds of information collection, information system can to sensory information, process information, and even all kinds of equipment in control system. Monitoring system based on wireless sensor network (WSN) mainly takes advantage of the wireless sensor network technology, the target recognition, more integration, collaborative perception and positioning strip of the three-layer network system, to monitor and control system in each monitoring targets for effective information gathering classification and high-precision positioning . Yet because most of the control and monitoring system for the application environment is complex and cannot be copied and inconvenience people monitored real-time tracking, so the size of the wireless sensor network (WSN) and the relationship between each sensor node can't set expectations, the dynamic features make the network topology information technology is faced with great challenge. ZigBee technology is a kind of close, low complexity and low power consumption, low data rate and low cost of wireless network technology Computation unit contains microcontroller and memory. Finally, the communication unit contains transceiver to transmit and receive data.
The reasons for using Zigbee are,
• Reliable and self-healing
• Supports large number of nodes.
• Easy to deploy
• Very long battery life
• Secure
• Low cost
• Can be used globally
• Vibrant industry support with thirty or more
vendors supplying products and services
• Open Standards protocol with no or negligible licensing fees
• Chipsets available from multiple sources
• Remotely upgradeable firmware
• No new wires
 
  
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gmu377lgzp27xz4v11r6.png)



**ZigBee Network System**
The ZigBee network layer consists of the physical layer, the media access control layer (MAC), the network layer (NWK) and the application layer from the bottom up.
 There are four layers in total. 
1)Physical layer 
2) Network Layer
3)MAC Layer
4)Application Layer
 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/u1qf6hrty0biwmvlxmxj.png)



**Physical layer**-the main function of the physical layer is to transparently transfer various data bitstreams between data link entities on a physical transmission medium. Ee802.15.4 standard physical layer functions include data transmission and reception, physical channel energy detection, rf transceiver activation and closure, idle channel evaluation, link quality indicator, physical layer property parameter acquisition and setting. These functions are realized through the physical layer service access interface.
The physical layer mainly has two service interfaces (SAP): physical layer management service access interface (plme-sap). In addition to transferring management services between the physical layer and the MAC layer, plme-sap is also responsible for maintaining the physical layer PAN information base (PHY PIB). Physical layer data service access interface (pd-sap). Pd-sap is responsible for providing data services between the physical layer and the MAC layer. Plme-sap and pd-sap implement various physical layer functions through physical layer service primitives.

**MAC Layer**-This layer provides interface between physical layer and network layer. This provides two services; MAC data services and MAC management service interfacing to the MAC sub–Layer Management Entity (MLME) Service Access Point called (MLME-SAP). The MAC data service enables the transmission and reception of MAC Protocol Data Units (MPDUs) across the PHY data service. MAC layer is responsible for generating beacons and synchronizing devices to the beacon signal in a beacon enabled services. It is also performing association and dissociation function. It defines four frame structures, are Beacon frame, Data frame, Acknowledge frame, MAC command frame. Basically, there are two types of topology; star and peer to peer. Peer to peer topology can take different shapes depends on its restrictions. Peer to peer is known as mesh, if there is no restriction. Another form is tree topology. Interoperability is one of the advantages of ZigBee protocol stack. ZigBee has wide range of applications.

**Network layer** - Equivalent to a person's nerve centre and the brain, is responsible for the information transmission and processing system. Data management and processing technology of the network layer is to achieve a data-centric core technology of Internet of things. Data management and processing technology including data storage, query, analysis, mining, understanding, and based on the theory and technology data of decisions and actions. 

**Application layer**.
 Application layer is based on sensor data to describe the specific application. Iot application is applied to the further development of the Internet network, from the early data services as the main characteristics of the file transfer, to the user as the center of the application, such as online gaming, social networking, etc., then to objects tracking, environmental awareness, smart grid, intelligent transportation and other items of sensory data based physical form of the Internet.