More features for ZigBee

The ZigBee Alliance, a global group of companies creating wireless solutions for commercial and industrial use, has added features to the ZigBee specification to give manufacturers greater flexibility when designing compatible products.

Highlights of the expanded set of features known as ZigBee Pro include:

• Network scalability — improved support for larger networks offering more management, flexibility, performance choices;
• Fragmentation — ability to divide longer messages and enables interaction with other protocols and systems;
• Frequency agility — networks dynamically change channels should interference occur;
• Automated device address management — designed for large networks with added network management and configuration tools
• Group addressing — offers additional traffic optimisation needed for large networks
• Wireless commissioning — secure wireless commissioning capabilities
• Centralised data collection — to optimise information flow in large networks

With the addition of these features to the specification, the Alliance is shifting its attention to deployment of the technology for energy management and efficiency, specifically in areas like public application profiles for advance metering infrastructure (AMI). Public application profiles enable end-to-end, multi-vendor interoperable solutions in markets such as AMI, home automation, commercial building automation and telecommunications.