July 26, 2006
What is ZigBee's Relationship to RFID?
[Updated July 27th] If you've watched Star Trek, you're familiar with some of the technological features, particularly crew member location. Someone asks the computer for the location of a certain crew member, and the computer queries their badge, then responds. Well thanks to ZigBee, that ability is now close to reality. At least the location-tracking ability, if not the the voice-operated ability.
ZigBee is a wireless protocol built upon IEEE 802.15.4 and is related to several other wireless protocols. It's particularly useful for setting up WPANs (Wireless Personal Area Networks) of SEDs (Service Enabled Devices). Essentially, Zigbee allows enabled "appliances" to talk to each other, regardless of manufacturer. This has many uses in RFID applications.
The ZigBee protocol provides a low-speed, low-power communication for devices that need to communicate wirelessly within a 10-meter (33-foot) range (i.e., a WPAN). WPAN clusters can be connected together to extend that range.
There are three frequencies that provide different bit transfer rates. The most commonly used frequency is 2.4 Ghz, which provides 250 kbps (kilobits per second). Other shorter-wave frequencies offer lower transfer rates. This protocol allows communication with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other wireless networks as well.
ZigBee is not an alternative for RFID, but is rather a network platform, enabling RFID devices to communicate with each other as well as other networked devices.
This ability of ZigBee is being demonstrated at Saint Luke's East-Lee's Summit Hospital in Lee's Summit, Missouri, part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The trials there allow hospital staff to locate patients wearing RFID-enabled badges. RFID readers query for badges, and if any are present, transmit signals over the ZigBee WPAN network. The system has allowed doctors, nurses, and other staff to find patients, on different floors, with a high degree of accuracy.
These results bode well. Besides closed systems such as unwired hospitals, a similar RFID + ZigBee setup could be used by miners or any environment where the safety of individuals is enhanced by non-intrusive tracking methods.
Additional sources: [Expert Answer Center, IEEE WPAN projects, Network World]
Note: As per RFBase's comment below, this is a correction. The ZigBee capabilities demonstrated at St Luke's Hospital consists of the RFID tags inside patient badges querying for RF transceivers and communicating via ZigBee. There are no RFID readers, per se, and thus these do not communicate over a WPAN network, as indicated above.
Apologies for the error. Thanks to RFBase for the heads up.
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