Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008 - (Page 26)

26 LOW POWER RF ZigBee goes green with support for smart energy By Brian Blum, ZigBee product marketing - LPRF, Texas Instruments, www.ti.com/zigbee ince the ﬁrst published speciﬁcation in 2004, the ZigBee standard has now matured to the point of global acceptance and is starting to make some real traction in the market. ZigBee provides a cost-effective, standards-based wireless networking solution that supports technology focused on low-data rate, lowpower mesh communication. Although most ZigBee products and deployments to date still remain somewhat proprietary, in the sense that they are sold as systems and not devices that link into a public network, a recent focus on advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) or more speciﬁcally, Smart Energy, is well positioned to open up ZigBee to become the truly interoperable global standard that has been claimed all these years. So what is AMI and how will ZigBee provide a solution? Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is deﬁned by Wikipedia as “systems that measure, collect and analyze energy usage, from advanced devices such as electricity meters, gas meters, and/or water meters, through various communication media on request or on a pre-deﬁned schedule. The infrastructure includes hardware, software, communications, customer associated systems and meter data management software.” The AMI initiative came about as state and local governments push utilities to develop business models that will support dynamic pricing, push for reductions in energy consumption and cost, and decrease the peak energy demand on the system by utilizing load control and demand response. The basic idea is to provide information and incentive to the customer, enabling them to be more responsible for how they consume energy in the home. Obviously, this AMI initiative goes well beyond simply deploying ZigBee, but for the sake of this article, I will focus on the role of ZigBee in AMI. As a standard, ZigBee and the 802.15.4 PHY and MAC protocol on which it is deﬁned, speciﬁes the details of the network over which application messaging takes place. This means that ZigBee provides the backbone, but doesn’t specify or limit the details of what is being communicated. All S Representing a mesh network. ZigBee devices participating in the AMI network will follow the same rules for network discovery, joining, security and establishing links (binding) on a peer-topeer basis. However, simply adhering to the same networking standard is not enough for full interoperability. To ensure that devices all speak the same language, conformance must be achieved at the application layer. In ZigBee, this is what is referred to as a public proﬁle. ZigBee smart energy To support AMI, the ZigBee Alliance has deﬁned and ratiﬁed the Smart Energy proﬁle. The details were debated and ﬁnalized in a committee made up of meter and thermostat vendors, utility companies and other interested parties. ZigBee Smart Energy offers utility companies a secure mechanism for communicating with “smart” devices and appliances, allowing energy management in the home. By way of a voting majority, the Smart Energy proﬁle deﬁnes metering, demand response and load control, pricing, text messaging and notiﬁcation, security and a list of supported devices. More speciﬁcally, the proﬁle deﬁnes which devices will be allowed into the AMI network (e.g., gateway, electric, water and gas meter, thermostat, load control device, in home display), and the required and optional messaging that must be supported between these devices. One major component of AMI is the support for real-time pricing so that billing can be achieved on an interval (e.g., 15-minute window) basis. The cost of producing energy rises signiﬁcantly during peak demand times (it costs signiﬁcantly more money to squeeze out extra electricity when power plants are running at close to maximum efﬁciency). Therefore, the ability to establish and offer pricing on a per-interval basis as compared to the current ﬂat rate pricing offered today provides beneﬁts to both the utility company and the consumer. Interval pricing means that a consumers’ electric bill will reﬂect their actual usage cost. For those who are looking to save money, interval pricing will reward people who make an effort to turn off lights, unplug unused appliances, adjust their thermostats when they’re not home, and use non-essential appliances like the dishwasher and washing machine when it is cheaper (and greener) to produce Microwave Engineering Europe ● October 2008 ● www.mwee.com 026_027_MWEE.indd 26 6/10/08 8:12:16 http://www.ti.com/zigbee http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008 Contents Comment News Cover Feature: AWR's AXIEM Software Brings 3D Planar Electromagnetic (EM) Simulation "Up Front" RFID: Augmented Reality: Beyond RFID and QR Codes for Mobile Phone Platforms Filters & Frequency Synthesis ZigBee Goes Green with Support for Smart Energy Simplify Mobile Data Applications and Services Test Enabling the State-of-the-Art in Automatic Test Equipment National Physical Laboratory Test Facility Aids Development of Next-Generation Antennas Selecting the Synthetic Test Environment for Transmit-Receive (T-R) Modules in a Phased Array Radar System Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008

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