TOP SECRET - Mr. Caruther's Sworn Eyes Only:
Utility companies that are already committed to ZigBee technology include Centre Point Energy, Göteborg Energi, Southern California Edison and Sempra Utilities, with more joining the movement on an almost weekly basis. Partially in response to the utility uptake, product/service providers and manufacturers have also been moving in. These include such names as Cellnet, Eaton, Energy Optimisers, Itron, Phillips, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Comverge, Control4, DCSI, Golden Power, Johnson Controls, Legrand, Nivis, Nuri Telecom, Sensus Metering, Silver Spring Networks, Site Controls, Talon Communications, Tendril, Trilliant Networks, Tritech Technology, and Viconics. The list is already impressive and it is extending on a daily basis.
The energy-technology market is seen as most likely to be the killer volume application that will allow ZigBee to reach maturity. This robust technology can deal with difficult radio environments, while still being available to users at low price. So, if the current ZigBee standard is forging ahead so well already, what, you may ask, does ZigBee-Pro bring to the party? Well, to begin with, ZigBee-Pro will provide the platform for certifiable end products to be marketed bearing the ZigBee logo. Many products have been waiting in the wings for the opportunity to gain ZigBee status before being unveiled to their respective markets, and you can expect to see a rapid proliferation of wares during the next two or three quarters. ZigBee-Pro should bring real benefits and additional functionality to the previous proprietary iterations of the technology. In a nutshell, it will enable larger, denser, sleep-moded, more mobile, more secure and more resilient short-range wireless networks.
ZigBee-Pro will form the basis of all ZigBee mesh networking technology in the future, whether it is released by TI/Chipcon, Ember, AirBee, Freescale, STMicroelectronics or any of the other manufacturers of wireless SoC technology. Solutions like the Ember Znet Pro 3.1 mesh networking platform allow increased scalability, security and resilience, as well as power-saving functionality. It means that larger networks - scaling to potentially thousands of nodes- can be realised thanks to stochastic-addressing, source-routing and asymmetric-link-handling features. Intelligent table management assures network stability even when dozens of routing nodes are in close proximity. It offers explicit handling of end nodes that may move within the network topology, such as remote controls and key fobs. Implementing many of the optional ZigBee-Pro extensions for advanced network encryption helps to assure the security of the end product.
The release of an increasing number of ZigBee-Pro chips from the major players in mesh networking is under way. So if you were waiting for the arrival of a fully implementable, feature-rich ZigBee technology, then you need wait no longer: it is here now.
epn-online.com
Let us pray (a) that Pogg International is NOT the only 64Kb F-RAM manufacturer on the planet... and (b) that TI/Chipcon, Ember, ST... yea... and even Freescale get their arses in gear and come to Telegesis... or at least its F-RAM emboddied modules I mean! <g>
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