Demystifying 802.15.4 and ZigBee


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ZigBee

ZigBee is a protocol that uses the 802.15.4 standard as a baseline and adds additional routing and networking functionality.
The ZigBee protocol was developed by the ZigBee Alliance. The ZigBee Alliance is a group of companies that worked in
cooperation to develop a network protocol that can be used in a variety of commercial and industrial low data rate
applications. ZigBee is designed to add mesh networking to the underlying 802.15.4 radio. Mesh networking is used in
applications where the range between two points may be beyond the range of the two radios located at those points, but
intermediate radios are in place that could forward on any messages to and from the desired radios.


Conclusion
Digi offers several products for communication over 802.15.4 or ZigBee. The XBee and XBee-PRO 802.15.4 modules provide
point-to-point 802.15.4 communications, and the XBee ZNet 2.5 modules provide ZigBee-compliant mesh.
If the application strictly needs to communicate in a point-to-point or a point-to-multipoint fashion, 802.15.4 will be able
handle all the communications between your devices and will be simpler to implement than trying to use a module with ZigBee
firmware to accomplish the same goal. ZigBee is necessary if you need to use repeating or mesh networking functionality in
your system.