Introduction
Zigbee has been compared as a short version of WiFi. Keeping some features like range and power consumption apart, Zigbee and WiFi are often used in similar applications in terms of household-based wireless communication. Interestingly, both have been developed and proposed in a different mindset, and hence some significant differences exist between ZigBee and WiFi. This article analyses and contrasts these two technologies on various technical and practical levels.
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ZigBee
ZigBee is a low-power, low data-rate variant of wireless protocols like WiFi, using many of the same networking, security, and interference avoidance technologies and protocols.
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Keypoints
- Used IEEE 802.15.4 to create it.
- The Zigbee frequency band is generally 2.4 GHz across the world.
- Like UWB, it employs BPSK and QPSK modulation methods.
- In ZigBee, there are over sixty-five thousand (65000) cell nodes.
- In ZigBee, there are sixteen RF channels.
- Zigbee likewise requires modest bandwidth, although it is usually more than Bluetooth's bandwidth.
- The ZigBee radio signal has a range of ten to a hundred meters.
Types of ZigBee devices
There are four ZigBee device types:
Router
A mesh network's typical citizen is a ZigBee router. It sends and receives messages from other devices, including routers. Each router is redundant in an ideal setup. As a result of rerouting and redundancy, if a router loses network connectivity, traffic to the other nodes in the network remains intact.
End device
The traffic from a ZigBee end device is not routed to other nodes. It spends most of its time sleeping. Simple peripherals like switches, attenuators, and other ZigBee end devices are standard.
Coordinator
A ZigBee coordinator is a ZigBee router that has all of the router's features. The coordinator is also in charge of network setup, which means it approves new nodes joining the network.
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Trust center
The ZigBee trust center manages the encryption and decryption keys, distributing the keys to new nodes. The coordinator and the trust center are nearly always the same equipment.