Building Wireless Sensor Networks Using Arduino

Other XBee families

The ZigBee network structure used by the XBee ZB modules is the most complex of all the XBee modules discussed in this book. The other modules do not require having a central coordinator or going through a join procedure, but instead rely on manually assigning a 16-bit network identifier (ID) and operating channel (CH) on all nodes (except XBee-PRO 868, which only has one channel available). Security is also simpler: every node has the network key (KY) manually configured. There is no key distribution mechanism.

For the XBee 802.15.4 family, this applies in the default configuration, but there is a second mode where a simple join procedure can allow nodes to automatically detect the right channel and/or network identifier to ...