ZigBee Communication Research Articles

Path Loss Analysis of ZigBee for Smart Meter Network Deployment in NAN

A fundamental and vital aspect of Smart Metering infrastructure is the communication technologies and techniques associated with it, especially between the Smart Meters and the Data Concentrator Unit. Among many available communication technologies, ZigBee provides a low-cost, low-power, and easy-to-deploy network solution for a Smart Meter network. There exists limited literature that discusses ZigBee as a potential communication technology for long-range networks. Hence thorough analysis is demanded on the suitability of ZigBee for smart meter deployment under different types of environmental conditions, coverage ranges, and obstacles. This work evaluates the performance of an extended ZigBee module in outdoor as well as indoor conditions in the presence of different types of obstacles. Parameters are obtained for path loss exponent and the standard deviation of the Gaussian Random variable to validate the Log Normal Shadowing model for modeling long-range ZigBee communication. The impact of obstacles on path loss is also considered. The results show that the Log Normal Shadowing model is a good approximation for the behavior of ZigBee path loss. Accordingly, the suitability of ZigBee for a Smart Meter network spanned as a Neighborhood Area Network is also assessed based on the approximated model.

DMPC-based control solution for mobile robots platoon based on ZigBee communication

The integration of mobile robots into various applications, operating collaboratively in groups known as platoons, presents challenges in communication, control, and synchronization. This paper introduces a control solution for mobile robot platoons based on a DMPC algorithm and the ZigBee protocol for V2V communication. This communication standard was selected for its low power consumption, cost-effectiveness, and reliable data transmission over short distances. Furthermore, a testbed and methodology for the experimental evaluation of the proposed control solution were developed. The results demonstrate the efficacy and feasibility of the proposed control and communication solutions.

RSSI Measurement Analysis of Zigbee-Based Wireless Sensor Networks in Various Topologies for Solar Panel Monitoring

Abstract— Solar panels require performance monitoring when energy shortages occur in the area. Monitoring solar panels requires a detection device to detect solar panels, including the ACS712 current sensor for monitoring the output current of the solar panel, a DC voltage sensor for monitoring battery performance, and a DHT11 temperature sensor for monitoring the temperature of the solar panel storage battery. The WSN technology that can work is ZigBee communication. This ZigBee communication research uses various topology methods, including star, tree, and mesh topologies. Solar panel monitoring tests are carried out indoors and outdoors. The ZigBee communication device used is the XBee S2C device, which operates at a frequency of 2.4 GHz. From a comparison of various topologies, the mesh topology is a topology with good performance because it has the characteristic of choosing a router with the fastest path to reach the coordinator. It is proven by monitoring solar panels with an optimal distance of 80 m, which is carried out from outdoors with an RSSI value of -84 dBm, a throughput of 0.55 kbps, and a delay of 2.77 ms, producing power for 150 minutes with an average current of 0.14 A, voltage of 9.86 V, and temperature of 31.48°C. The number of disturbances and weather conditions greatly affect signal propagation, which can hamper the data transmission process. Throughput fluctuates due to uncertain weather conditions, and delay fluctuates due to a lot of interference from other radio signals.
 Keyworrds— Wireless Sensor Nirbael (WSN), RSSI, ZigBee, Panel Surya, Thinger.IO

IIoT Low-Cost ZigBee-Based WSN Implementation for Enhanced Production Efficiency in a Solar Protection Curtains Manufacturing Workshop.

Nowadays, the Industry 4.0 concept and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are considered essential for the implementation of automated manufacturing processes across various industrial settings. In this regard, wireless sensor networks (WSN) are crucial due to their inherent mobility, easy deployment and maintenance, scalability, and low power consumption, among other benefits. In this context, the presented paper proposes an optimized and low-cost WSN based on ZigBee communication technology for the monitoring of a real manufacturing facility. The company designs and manufactures solar protection curtains and aims to integrate the deployed WSN into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in order to optimize their production processes and enhance production efficiency and cost estimation capabilities. To achieve this, radio propagation measurements and 3D ray launching simulations were conducted to characterize the wireless channel behavior and facilitate the development of an optimized WSN system that can operate in the complex industrial environment presented and validated through on-site wireless channel measurements, as well as interference analysis. Then, a low-cost WSN was implemented and deployed to acquire real-time data from different machinery and workstations, which will be integrated into the ERP system. Multiple data streams have been collected and processed from the shop floor of the factory by means of the prototype wireless nodes implemented. This integration will enable the company to optimize its production processes, fabricate products more efficiently, and enhance its cost estimation capabilities. Moreover, the proposed system provides a scalable platform, enabling the integration of new sensors as well as information processing capabilities.

Study on smart grid fault detection based on ZigBee and MapX technologies

As the complexity of the power system and the increasing demand for electricity continue to rise, ensuring the reliability and stability of the power system becomes critically important. This study utilizes ZigBee communication modules to establish a sensor network for real-time monitoring of the power system's status and employs MapX technology to achieve geographic information visualization of the power system. Through an improved RBF-PCA-WFCM algorithm, grid data can be dimensionally reduced, enabling simulation training tailored to grid loads, resulting in more accurate algorithm analysis and optimization. This paper introduces fault localization and diagnostic methods, as well as clustering optimization algorithms, to achieve fault monitoring, analysis, and identification in the smart power grid. Research findings demonstrate that the intelligent power grid data analysis and fault detection system based on ZigBee and MapX technologies can enhance the reliability of the power system and better support the increasing demands of the evolving field of electricity.

CPS: Cross-interface network Partitioning and Scheduling towards QoS-aware data flow delivery in multimedia IoT

In the Internet of Things (IoT), multimedia traffic for audio, image, and video accounts for the largest proportion (over 78.7%) of the total traffic, bringing forward the vision of multimedia IoT (M-IoT). As part of the realization of loT, M-IoT is a general network paradigm that constitutes many smart objects equipped with the capability to collect multimedia data from the physical environment and deliver the data to other things. To satisfy a certain level of user experience, Quality of Service (QoS) is required to be regulated to ensure acceptable delivery of the multimedia content. As the most widely-used wireless technology, WiFi has been recommended for IoT communications for its high data rate, native IP compatibility, and good reusability of the existing infrastructures. However, WiFi suffers from channel contention, especially during multi-hop communications, which degrades the QoS performance and hinders its use for many M-IoT services. Although numerous protocols have been proposed to mitigate WiFi contention, they often consume much WiFi bandwidth for network control, lowering the level of achievable QoS performance. To address this issue, we propose a distributed Cross-interface network Partitioning and Scheduling (CPS) protocol, which leverages the co-existing ZigBee communications to divide the network into partitions and allows only one node in each partition to use its WiFi interface to transmit data at any time, for bandwidth-efficient and delay-constrained data flow delivery in M-IoT. A prototype node is implemented by integrating COTS ZigBee and WiFi interfaces into a BeagleBone Green wireless platform for IoT. Extensive field experiments are conducted in a multi-hop network of 24 prototype nodes that deliver real multimedia data (images and videos). The experiment results show that CPS outperforms the standard WiFi and a state-of-the-art contention control scheme (by 62.6% and 26.4% under high data traffic, respectively) in terms of a QoS metric capturing two basic performance metrics (i.e., bandwidth efficiency and end-to-end delay) of multi-hop communications, while retaining fair QoS performance and high energy efficiency.

Enhancing Security in ZigBee Wireless Sensor Networks: A New Approach and Mutual Authentication Scheme for D2D Communication.

The latest version of ZigBee offers improvements in various aspects, including its low power consumption, flexibility, and cost-effective deployment. However, the challenges persist, as the upgraded protocol continues to suffer from a wide range of security weaknesses. Constrained wireless sensor network devices cannot use standard security protocols such as asymmetric cryptography mechanisms, which are resource-intensive and unsuitable for wireless sensor networks. ZigBee uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is the best recommended symmetric key block cipher for securing data of sensitive networks and applications. However, AES is expected to be vulnerable to some attacks in the near future. Moreover, symmetric cryptosystems have key management and authentication issues. To address these concerns in wireless sensor networks, particularly in ZigBee communications, in this paper, we propose a mutual authentication scheme that can dynamically update the secret key value of device-to-trust center (D2TC) and device-to-device (D2D) communications. In addition, the suggested solution improves the cryptographic strength of ZigBee communications by improving the encryption process of a regular AES without the need for asymmetric cryptography. To achieve that, we use a secure one-way hash function operation when D2TC and D2D mutually authenticate each other, along with bitwise exclusive OR operations to enhance cryptography. Once authentication is accomplished, the ZigBee-based participants can mutually agree upon a shared session key and exchange a secure value. This secure value is then integrated with the sensed data from the devices and utilized as input for regular AES encryption. By adopting this technique, the encrypted data gains robust protection against potential cryptanalysis attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis is conducted to illustrate how the proposed scheme effectively maintains efficiency in comparison to eight competitive schemes. This analysis evaluates the scheme's performance across various factors, including security features, communication, and computational cost.

A Communication Protocol for Online Monitoring of Power Quality in Distribution System

The wireless sensor network (WSN) can be used in many applications, especially electrical distribution systems (EDS). The power transmitted on the distribution line has a huge impact by environmental changes like temperature, humidity etc., leading to problems like voltage sag, voltage swell, and changes in the power frequency. These effects affect the devices that are driven by power, for large scale industries, the impact is so heavy. To monitor the imbalance in the transmitting power, the sensor nodes are used to monitor the PQ issues. Then the monitored information needs to be transmitted to the monitoring centre; in this flow, communication plays an important role in minimising the cost of the WSN. For monitoring the PQ, first, the sensor nodes are deployed in the appropriate area. Deploying the sensor node anywhere on the sensor node is impossible. Therefore, the node in this article is used on the feed circuit, which is mounted on the insulator for protection from the power supply. Then the bald eagle search (BES) optimisation based ZigBee communication protocol (ZBES) is designed to transmit the retrieved data from the sensor node to the monitoring station. The designed protocol will make the cost efficient and energy saving path to transmit data to the edge node. The performance of the proposed routing protocol is compared with the ZigBee and other routing protocols.

Energy-saving street lamp system based on wireless sensor network

The purpose of this paper is to design a smart street lamp controscheme that uses wireless sensor networks to meet the needs of smartcity construction and to create energy-saving street lamps. First, the traditional neural network algorithm is enhanced to make it simple to dynamically adjust the brightness of the lamp node with ambient light. Secondly, the wireless sensor network technology based on Zigbee communication and the LabVIEW host computer program were combined to create the intelligent street lamp system. Finally, the software and hardware tests were carried out to realize the dynamic adjustment, remote control and data transmission of street lights. The results show that the lamps controlled by neural network can flexibly adjust the light intensity according to the ambient lighting and traffic flow. This method enables intelligent adjustment and energy saving.

Mobile agents assisted data collection in wireless sensor networks utilizing ZigBee technology

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are being utilized widely in many different industries, including agriculture, medicine, and the military. They contain many distributed sensors to monitor physical or environmental factors, such as temperature, humidity, pressure, etc. and use various communication technologies, including WiFi, radio frequency (RF), Bluetooth, and ZigBee. ZigBee is always a preferred choice for applications in WSNs. ZigBee has remarkable capabilities, such as saving energy and transmitting data over long distances. ZigBee end devices, as well as a ZigBee coordinator (ZC) and a ZigBee router (ZR), are crucial components of the WSNs. This article discusses the fundamentals of the ZigBee network, one of the most popular data transmission technologies in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Additionally, we want to discuss the ZigBee communication technologies and their applications, particularly in the networks. Different scenarios for mobile agents including their routing protocols in WSNs are considered. Simulation results of different scenarios demonstrate how easily scalability can be achieved and provide a foundation for further ZigBee application development. At last, some conclusions and ideas are presented for considerations.

Remote Identification for Smart-meter Operation Error based on a Wireless Sensor Network in a Smart City

This paper presents a remote identification method for smart-meter operation errors based on a wireless sensor network (WSN) in a smart city to reduce the bad operation of smart meters. In the WSN, ZigBee communication technology was used to collect data from smart meters to enhance the reliability of information. The LEACH protocol can effectively extend the network life cycle and was selected as a communication protocol for WSNs to collect operation data from intelligent meters. Based on the operation data of a smart meter collected by a WSN, a remote identification model of operation error of a smart meter was established. The limited memory least square algorithm was adopted to construct the remote identification model of operation error for a smart meter to realize the remote identification of a smart-meter error in a smart city. The proposed method can use a WSN to collect operation data from a smart meter and remotely identify the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean square error (RMSE) of a smart meter’s operation error, which were less than 1%.

Development of Digital Device Using ZigBee for Environmental Monitoring in Underground Mines

In underground mines, various mining activities may generate dust or vibrations, affecting workers’ health and safety. Therefore, for worker safety, we must monitor the environment and identify possible risks. However, it is difficult to install multiple sensors and acquire data simultaneously because of the difficulties of connecting to an external network in underground mines. This study developed a digital device to share acquired data by combining ZigBee communication technology with an accelerometer and dust sensor. In total, 29 vibration modules, 14 dust modules, and 2 coordinator modules were installed at Taeyoung EMC’s Samdo Mine in Samcheok, Republic of Korea. Because of its application, we could detect changes in vibration and dust before and after blasting. The dust density of the devices close to the blasting point increases rapidly up to about 230 µg/m3 and then decreases to about 180 µg/m3, and the dust density of the devices further increases over time. The dust density was usually maintained at a value of about 100 to 150 µg/m3 before blasting. The spatial distribution of the dust density of multiple devices was visualized using ArcGIS Pro. Although the wireless sensor network is well-established, some modules were temporarily disconnected from the network. In order to solve the problem of unstable network connection in some modules, change of network settings and line of sight analysis are required. Improvements in the technology developed in this study may help prevent potential hazards in underground mines.

시각을 포함한 치매환자용 스마트 다감각 시나리오 및 시스템 개발

This study creates a smart multi-sensory ward in which dementia patients can receive multi-sensory stimulation in daily life and automatically grasp the patient’s condition to increase the convenience of elderly patients. In the process of establishing a smart multi-sensory system, previous studies that stimulate each sensation, tools that can stimulate sensation, machine learning tools that can grasp the patient’s condition, and IoT sensors were investigated. Lighting equipment set similar to the spectrum of daylight was used as a visual stimulus element. ‘Pium’ and ‘Moodo’, smart diffuser devices were used as an olfactory element, and a speaker connected with Raspberry Pi as an auditory element. As factors to determine the patient’s condition, a ‘Teachable Machine’ that detects the patient’s posture through machine learning and a ZigBee communication type IoT sensor were used. After writing a multi-sensory scenario, a smart multi-sensory system was built using Amazon Alexa and Node-RED programs. Unlike conventional multi-sensory therapy that had to be moved to a fixed treatment room at a fixed time, this study created a smart multi-sensory ward that could be treated even in the patient’s daily life without time and space limitations.

Comprehensive Performance Analysis of Zigbee Communication: An Experimental Approach with XBee S2C Module.

The recent development of wireless communications has prompted many diversified applications in both industrial and medical sectors. Zigbee is a short-range wireless communication standard that is based on IEEE 802.15.4 and is vastly used in both indoor and outdoor applications. Its performance depends on networking parameters, such as baud rates, transmission power, data encryption, hopping, deployment environment, and transmission distances. For optimized network deployment, an extensive performance analysis is necessary. This would facilitate a clear understanding of the trade-offs of the network performance metrics, such as the packet delivery ratio (PDR), power consumption, network life, link quality, latency, and throughput. This work presents an extensive performance analysis of both the encrypted and unencrypted Zigbee with the stated metrics in a real-world testbed, deployed in both indoor and outdoor scenarios. The major contributions of this work include (i) evaluating the most optimized transmission power level of Zigbee, considering packet delivery ratio and network lifetime; (ii) formulating an algorithm to find the network lifetime from the measured current consumption of packet transmission; and (iii) identifying and quantizing the trade-offs of the multi-hop communication and data encryption with latency, transmission range, and throughput.

Effective Integration of ZigBee Communication Technology and Internet of Things Technology

ZigBee technology is a representative standard of wireless communication technology with very low complexity, short distance, low rate, low power consumption and low cost. Internet of Things technology is the development trend. In order to achieve the effective integration of ZigBee communication technology and Internet of Things technology, improve the real-time transmission efficiency and form an exclusive communication system. This paper carries out wireless voice communication through the integration of ZigBee technology and Internet of Things technology, and puts forward the research topic of wireless voice communication. The ZigBee technology and the Internet of Things are organically integrated through the clustering algorithm, the shortcomings of the Internet of Things technology are solved by using the advantages of ZigBee, the relevant model is constructed, the designed relevant algorithms are grouped, and the efficiency of the fused algorithm is compared with the algorithm before the fusion. The experimental results show that in the packet delivery rate experiment, the delivery rate of the algorithm is very high, and the speed can reach 97% at 20m/s. At the same time, the experimental results also show that the control overhead of the AODV protocol is significantly greater than that of the AODVjr protocol, and the AODV protocol can save at least 16% of the cost compared with the AODVjr protocol. And when the speed increases to a certain extent, the difference in control overhead between the two will become larger and larger.

LoRa enabled Real-time Monitoring of Workers in Building Construction Site

In construction, the real-time monitoring of the worker is necessary for ensuring safety in terms of health and accidents. The technology advancement in the sensors and wireless communication technology has inspired to implement Internet of Things (IoT) real-time monitoring in construction site. With this motivation, in this study we have proposed a system that is powered with long range (LoRa) and IEEE 802.15.4 based Zigbee communication for real-time implementation. Worker health monitoring mote, helmet detection mote, shoe detection mote, and glove detection mote are the primary components of the proposed system. In addition to this, a local server is embedded to supervise all the primary components and interconnect with gateway to log the real-time data on the cloud server for real-time implementation. As proof of concept, one of primary component i.e., health monitoring mote is implemented in the construction site to measure temperature and pulse rate of the work. In future, the remain components will be implemented in construction site, for the implementation of complete system in real-time. The current study enables to monitor the worker in the construction site and assist to respond immediately in case of emergency.

Intelligent Light Control System Based on Zigbee.

This system uses Freescale i.MX283 chip as the main control core of the control panel and LPC824 as the main control core of the light control point. ZigBee communication local area network is built. The ZigBee network is used to search all the nodes and display them on the control interface stably. The controller can selectively control the node and communicate with ZigBee. It supports simple and convenient human-computer interaction interface. The control panel can control RGB lamps of lamp control nodes as follows: control the light on and off, adjust the brightness of the light, toggle the color of the light, control the gradient of the light, control the flashing of RGB lamp, control timing switch of RGB lamp, realize the scene effect of the light, etc. After testing, the system is stable and applied to many lighting control occasions.

Development of the Monitoring Program for an Integrated Small-Scale Wind and Solar Systems based on IoT Technology

For monitoring the energy supply from the hybrid small-scale wind turbine generator (WTG) and rooftop solar Photovoltage (PV) systems, this paper presents the design of a management program of the studied system based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The proposed studied system consists of digital power meters that communicate wirelessly to the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) through the ZigBee communication standard. By using a free cloud platform will greatly facilitate the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) interface design work for a Human Machine Interface (HMI) or mobile phone. This system configuration may be easy to be fitted for collecting electrical information such as voltage, current, power, frequency of the system to be monitored. This is one of the cheap solutions deployed in small-scale hybrid power systems (HPS) or factories because wireless communication is very convenient in construction and installation.

Development of Water Level and Water Quality Monitoring System in Multiple Water Areas of Hongze Lake Based on 5G Technology

In order to further improve the intelligence level of current multi-water level water quality monitoring in Hongze Lake and reduce the incidence of catastrophic accidents, a multi-water water level water quality monitoring system based on 5G communication technologies in Hongze Lake was proposed in this paper. The embedded system chip RK3399 was used to construct the bottom-level monitoring core module. For the convenience of emergency and system debugging, the bottom-level module was also designed with a matrix keyboard and corresponding LCD liquid crystal display. Zigbee communication was used to obtain the water level and water quality sensor array information in multiple waters, and data fusion processing was performed through 5G communication. 5G module was used for communication between bottom-level module and server. At present, the cost of server leasing is relatively high. In order to reduce the cost of server leasing, the high-level language Delphi was combined with Socket communication to independently build the underlying server module in this paper. The underlying server module was convenient and flexible, with large storage capacity and low cost; the mobile APP client was designed to communicate wirelessly with the server. After on-the-spot monitoring of the Hongze Lake area, the monitoring system was in good operation, with fast parameter acquisition and screen capture, which could meet the expected results and provide a good solution for water level water quality monitoring in multiple water areas.

High reliability metro integrated monitoring system based on ZigBee communication

High reliability metro integrated monitoring system based on ZigBee communication