The ZigBee Alliance has ratified the first ZigBee specification for the development and deployment of extremely power efficient, cost effective, low data rate monitoring, control and sensing networks. The specification is the culmination of two years of worldwide development and interoperability testing by the more than 100 member companies within the ZigBee Alliance.
For those members that have already announced ZigBee-ready technology, the ratification of the specification enables them to quickly enhance their products and begin testing to obtain ZigBee-compliant certification. Alliance members have exclusive access to the final specification and will continue to participate in ongoing interoperability testing to verify that their products are ZigBee-compliant.
Now that the ZigBee specification has been ratified, the Alliance will continue to validate the specification through expanded interoperability and scalability tests and future enhancements.
The Alliance will actively promote the use of ZigBee-enabled technology in real-world applications to foster new, creative applications for the market, as well as to facilitate the broad market adoption of the ZigBee standard around the world. "The adoption of the ZigBee specification gives member companies the opportunity to capitalize on this innovative technology for monitoring, sensing and control applications in residential and commercial environments," said Bob Heile of the ZigBee Alliance. "We are excited to reach such a significant milestone in the development of the global ZigBee specification. Given the number of ZigBee-ready products announced in 2004, we anticipate seeing ZigBee-compliant consumer products as soon as early-2005."
ZigBee is a standards-based technology designed to address the unique needs of lowcost, low-power, wireless sensor networks for remote monitoring, home control, and building automation network applications in the industrial and consumer markets.
The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard. The ZigBee Alliance is a rapidly growing, non-profit industry consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, technology providers, OEMs, and end-users worldwide.