Zigbee in Wireless Sensor Network:

• A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of sensors which are densely distributed to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, pressure, etc.
• The sensor data is transmitted to network coordinator which is heart of the wireless personal area network.
• In the modern scenario wireless networks contains sensors as well as actuators. ZigBee is newly developed technology that works on IEEE standard 802.15.4, which can be used in the wireless sensor network (WSN).
• The low data rates, low power consumption, low cost are main features of ZigBee. WSN is composed of ZigBee coordinator (network coordinator), ZigBee router and ZigBee end device.
• The sensor nodes information in the network will be sent to the coordinator, the coordinator collects sensor data, stores the data in memory, process the data, and route the data to appropriate node.

Zigbee

• Zigbee is low power, low cost, wireless network communication based on the standard IEEE 802.15.4.
• Zigbee is suitable for low power, low data rate and secure application for wireless personal area networking (WPAN).
• Zigbee supports mesh, start, tree and other networking topologies.
• Zigbee works on the unlicensed spectrum ranging from 2.4-2.48GHz, 902 to 928 MHz and 86 to 868.6MHz.
• It works on an operating distance upto 100m at a data rate of 20 to 250kbps. As shown in the diagram above, zigbee devices can be classified into 3 categories.

a. Zigbee coordinator: This device is responsible for the creation of the network and for initiation of communication

b. ZigBee Router: It is responsible for routing the data to de=different end-devices across the network.

c. ZigBee End Device: It can only communicate with the ZR or ZC but doesn’t have capability to act as the mediator for transferring data from one device to another.

Zigbee is used for applications involving wireless sensor networks, industrial automation, home automation, Automatic meter reading, smoke detectors, etc.