7
ZigBee
7.1 Development of the Standard
The 802.15.4 standard provides a physical and link layer technology optimized for low bitrate, low duty cycle applications. However, in practice sensor and control applications also need a mesh networking layer, and a standard syntax for application layer messages. In 2002, several companies decided to form the ZigBee alliance to build the missing standard layers that would be required to enable a multivendor mesh network on top of 802.15.4 radio links.
In 2008, the ZigBee alliance counted more than 200 members:
- Promoter members get early access to, contribute to and vote on the specifications of the alliance. They can veto decisions made by other participants in the alliance and get special marketing exposure in ZigBee events. New candidates for the promoter status must get co-opted by existing promoter members.
- Participant members have the same contribution and voting rights as promoters, but without veto rights.
- Adopters also get early access at the specifications, but can contribute only to the application profile working groups, and do not have voting rights.
The ZigBee alliance regularly organizes interop events, called ZigFests, and organize a developers conference twice a year. In order to ensure interoperability across vendors, the use of the ZigBee Compliant Platform (ZCP) certification and logo is reserved for products passing the ZigBee test suite, which includes interoperability tests with the “Golden units” (stacks from ...
