ZigBee Wireless Networks and Transceivers

Chapter 9

Related Technologies

ZigBee is not the only standard that adopts the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY and MAC layers to offer a wireless networking protocol. This chapter provides an overview of two other standards (6LoWPAN and WirelessHART) that reuse the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY and MAC layers as part of their wireless networking protocol. This chapter also reviews the basics of two wireless networking standards that are not based on IEEE 802.15.4 and compete with ZigBee in some application scenarios (Z-wave and ULP Bluetooth).

9.1 IPv6 over IEEE 802.15.4 (6LoWPAN)

The Internet Protocol (IP) version 6 (IPv6) [1] is a protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) [2]. IP is a network layer protocol for communication of data packets in a ...