[Voice Communications over ZigBee]

By

Acknowledgement

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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Abstract

The past several years have witnessed a rapid development in the wireless network area. So far wireless networking has been focused on high-speed and long range applications. However, there are many wireless monitoring and control applications for industrial and home environments which require longer battery life, lower data rates and less complexity than those from existing standards. What the market need is a globally defined standard that meets the requirement for reliability, security, low power and low cost. For such wireless applications a new standard called ZigBee has been developed by the ZigBee. The aim of this thesis work is to design fully functional ZigBee module, and to evaluate an application in a sensor network. This thesis work has resulted in fully functional ZigBee module, respectively. It is also shown that ZigBee sensors can be networked wirelessly. Eventually it is the authors hope that the modules will be used within ITN, and also be developed further for new applications.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION6

Aims and Objectives6

Method6

Structure of the thesis7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW8

ZigBee Alliance8

Network topologies9

Modulation/Spreading11

Wireless Sensor Networks14

Sensor Nodes14

The Rise of the MEMS14

Sensor Nodes Capabilities and Constraints15

Hierarchy of Sensor Nodes16

Wireless Sensor Networks Characteristics16

CHAPTER 3: BACKGROUND18

CHAPTER 4: DESIGN PROCESS20

Design Description20

Components20

Programming22

Data Interface23

RF Transceiver/Microcontroller Configuration and Data Interface25

PCB Overview30

CHAPTER 5: IMPLEMENTATION33

PCB Manufacturing33

Assembly34

Soldering34

Bill of Material34

Assembled Modules34

CHAPTER 6: TEST APPLICATION36

Temperature Coordinator36

Temperature Sensor37

CHAPTER 7: EVALUATION39

CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS41

REFERENCES42

APPENDIX44

Chapter 1: Introduction

The past several years have witnessed a rapid growth of wireless networking. However, up to now wireless networking has been mainly focused on high-speed communications, and relatively long range applications such as the IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards. The first well known standard focusing on Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPAN) was Bluetooth. However it has limited capacity for networking of many nodes. There are many wireless monitoring and control applications in industrial and home environments which require longer battery life, lower data rates and less complexity than those from existing standards (Akyildiz, 2002, 393). For such wireless applications, a new standard called IEEE 802.15.4 has been developed by IEEE. The new standard is also called ZigBee, when additional stack layers defined by the ZigBee Alliance are used.

Aims and Objectives

The objective of this thesis is to develop fully functional wireless ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 modules. This includes design using Protel DXP 2004, and implementation of the ZigBee protocol stack. To evaluate the new standard, a literature study must be performed. A test application will also be developed, in order to test the functionality of the ZigBee modules.

Method

The work is divided into several different ...