'ZigBee will get more devices connected'

As vice chairman of the ZigBee Alliance, Loyola College, Chennai -educated Venkat Bahl has been in the forefront of popularising ZigBee.

The Alliance has the backing of global companies like Samsung, Philips, Motorola, Mitsubishi Electric and ABB and was set up to encourage the building of wireless intelligence capabilities in every day devices.

Bahl, who is also the vice president of the US-based Ember Corporation, the software and chipset manufacturer, took time off to explain to Business Standard what ZigBee is. Excerpts:

What is ZigBee? What is required to set up a ZigBee network?

ZigBee is a low cost, low power, wireless mesh networking technology that is targeted at sensing, monitoring and control applications. Unlike any other wireless standard, ZigBee allows for a battery life of over one year and the ability to have a high number of nodes (over 64,000) over a broad area such as a building or even a city. These applications include: home control, automatic meter reading, building automation supply chain management and medical systems. What hardware is required to put up a Zigbee network?

You can buy a wireless enabled thermostat or airconditioner card that you can add to your existing airconditioner, and buy a remote control that will allow you to control your airconditioner.

The bigger application is in building s to automate the building airconditioning system.

So a hotel that wants to reduce electricity consumption would put in ZigBee-enabled thermostats in each room and put sensors in the dampers, valves and the management systems.

For the home, we have customers who want to instal ZigBee-enabled smoke detectors that are able to talk to a ZigBee gateway, which will send you an SMS if there is a problem or if the batteries need to be changed.

What would it cost to instal a ZigBee network at home? Starter bundles are being priced anywhere between $99 and $300, depending on the configuration.

Again, the idea is not to have a cool device but to protect your investment in your biggest asset "� your house.

You could have a sensor that tells you the door is open or one that tells you you have a leak.

How much do the sensors cost? Do they have to be embedded in the product (say, a lighting system) or can they be added to products that already are at home (to control, say, my lighting system or my front door)?

In some cases the sensors can be added later as stick-on sensors.

In some cases, such as the ballasts by Philips Lighting, "� they are a customer of ours (Ember) "� they are embedded in the ballast at the time of manufacturing.

What is machine-to-machine communications?

Machine-to-machine co-mmunications involves a machine talking to another machine without human intervention.

Today, computers and the internet are limited by the number of people "� one person has one or may be two computers, but not more than that.

In the case of ZigBee and m2m communications, you could have several hundred devices communicating per person. For example, in your house, you could have an oven with a faulty thermostat.

This can then communicate through your lights to your electricity meter, on to some collection point at, say, a lamp post that sends a message to a data centre.

The data centre can route the message to your oven manufacturer, alerting him to the problem and he can call you to schedule an appointment to fix your oven.

Let's put it is perspective. Today, 8-10 billion 8-bit micro controllers are shipped every year.

Only about 2 per cent of these have any communications capabilities. ZigBee and Ember aim to get a lot more of these devices connected.

In what spectrum does ZigBee work? Is it the same spectrum used for ovens and so on and is this spectrum available free in most countries?

ZigBee works in the 2.4GHz spectrum which is the same as that used by micro wave ovens.

This is available licence free in most parts of the world, including India, China, US, Europe and Japan.

How much distance can a sensor cover?

Distance varies according to the environment. The typical distance being measured is about 100 metres in open air.

How relevant is ZigBee to India? You said that one company has shown interest in it. Which company?

I cannot disclose the name of the company. Suffice it to say that several companies in India are very interested in this technology, for applications that range from automatic meter reading (AMR), to industrial and process control.

A few companies with software arms are actively looking at developing ZigBee.

The other area of activity is on the application side, where they can help OEMs develop/port their applications on to ZigBee and Ember stacks.