Updated:February 18, 2024 By

Zigbee Network Basics

The Zigbee network protocol is a common protocol used on home and industrial networks.

Although it is designed to be easy to set up it is important that you have a basic understanding of how it works.

These are my personal notes on Zigbee that be be helpful if you are new to the protocol.

What is Zigbee? – Zigbee is a low power, low data rate (250kbps) wireless protocol used primarily for Home automation and industrial control, building automation,sensor data collection etc – Wiki

Zigbee devices have a range (1 hop) of 10 to 20m and to be certified must have a battery life of 2 years.

Zigbee Network Topologies

Zigbee networks can be configured to operate in one of three topologies.

  • Star
  • Tree
  • Mesh

zigbee-networking-topologies

Devices can be split into:

  • Full Function Device (FFD)
  • Reduced Function Device (RFD

Full Function Device (FFD)- Can communicates with all node types and can operate in one of three modes:

  • PAN Coordinator: Sends beacon frames, provides routing information, manages short, network-specific addresses. Every network requires one
  • Router.-Relay messages between nodes. Not required in simple networks.
  • Normal End device.-Sends and receives messages. The only node type that can sleep.

There must be 1 coordinator on a Zigbee network.

Reduced Function Device (RFD): Can only talk to a single
FFD. These are end nodes. Example a smart lock,switch ect

Zigbee Network Addresses

All devices have a 64bit MAC address assigned by the manufacturer.

The MAC address is mapped to a unique 16 bit network address by the coordinator and assigned when the device joins the network. This is the Short address.

The coordinator has a network address of 0.

Zigbee also provides support for group addresses which allows message delivery to multiple nodes.

Device Binding

Zigbee also supports device binding were you can bind a device e.g a switch to another device e.g a bulb or to a group of devices.

Message Types

Zigbee supports three messaging types as per IP networks.

  • Unicast– one to one
  • Multicast -1 to a group
  • Broadcast -1 to all

Groups

Zigbee supports groups which let you assign devices to a group which is effectively a cluster of endpoints.

This allows you to address multiple devices with a single command.

PAN Address

This is a 16 bit address assigned by the coordinator when the network is created. It is equivalent to the IP network address.

The PAN address must be unique.

Application Addresses

A Zigbee node can support up to 240 applications.

Each application is assigned an endpoint number in the range 1-240. This is similar to tcp/ip ports.

A broadcast endpoint of 255 is also available.

Encryption

Data can be encrypted at one of three levels:

  • MAC
  • Network
  • Application

Encryption uses AES-128 and shared keys.

Example Zigbee Devices

  1. Philips Hue lighting and other device like motion sensors
  2. Amazon Echo dot Plus (Zigbee hub)
  3. Bosch Security Systems

Popularity ZigBee vs Z-Wave

zigbee-zwave

Video

Example Network

The following is a schematic of my test network that consists of a coordinator (zigbee2mqtt) a router and 3 end devices.

I placed the temperature sensor about 30 meters from the coordinator and the router in between the two.

Without the router the temperature sensor could not communicate with the coordinator.

zigbee-network-router

There was no manual configuration necessary the router found the coordinator and the temperature sensor found the router.

When I moved the temperature sensor back near to the coordinator the network reformed as shown below. (router in blue,coordinator in red)

zigbee-router-network-2

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