ZigBee vs. 6LoWPAN for Sensor Networks

最新推荐文章于 2020-11-23 17:21:33 发布

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ZigBee vs. 6LoWPAN for Sensor Networks

By Jen Fishbein, Director of Eastern Sales

Arguably, ZigBee is the most popular low-cost, low-power wireless mesh networking standard available today. Just go to the ZigBee alliance web page and you’ll get a good picture of companies adopting the new standard. ZigBee is being used for home automation, Smart Energy, commercial building automation and other low-data-rate wireless networks.

ZigBee is a networking layer built on top of IEEE standard 802.15.4 MAC. It was designed to provide a standards-based protocol for interoperability of sensor networks. 6LoWPAN, the new buzzword, appears to be competing with ZigBee.

So what is 6LoWPAN? Essentially, 6LoWPAN is ZigBee’s competition, as it can utilize 802.15.4 – but even better, it can run on other PHYs, and it allows for seamless integration with other IP-based systems. 6LoWPAN is an acronym for IPv6 over Low-power Wireless Personal Area Networks; that name originated from the working group in the IETF.

So, which one to use? Consider these factors.

Interoperability

Interoperability is one of the leading factors when choosing a wireless protocol. In technical terms, interoperability means that the applications do not need to know the constraints of the physical links that carry their packets. ZigBee defines the communication between 802.15.4 nodes (layer 2 in the IP world) and then defines new upper layers all the way to the application.

This means ZigBee devices can interoperate with other ZigBee devices, assuming they utilize the same profile (similar to Bluetooth).

6LoWPAN offers interoperability with other wireless 802.15.4 devices as well as with devices on any other IP network link (e.g., Ethernet or WiFi) with a simple bridge device. Bridging

between ZigBee and non-ZigBee networks requires a more complex application layer gateway.

The key requirement for IPv6 over 802.15.4 is that the maximum transmit unit (MTU) must be at least 1280 byte packets (per RFC 2460). Since the IEEE 802.15.4 standard packet size is 127 octets, an adaptation layer must be implemented to allow the transmission of IPv6 datagrams

over .4 networks.

Stack size/packet overhead

When comparing ZigBee and 6LoWPAN on 802.15.4, one must be familiar with the packet format and overhead, as this directly relates to the ease of network scaling and available room for payload data. Although there are alternative forms, typical configurations are shown below.

Figure 1 (Archrock supplied diagram)

Fctrl: Frame control bit fields

D ep: Destination endpoint

Clst: Cluster identifier

Prof: Profile identifier

S ep: Source endpoint

APS: APT counter (sequence to prevent duplicates)

IP routing over 6LoWPAN links does not necessarily require additional header information at the 6LoWPAN layer. This cuts down on packet overhead and allows more room for the payload data. Also, the typical code size for a full-featured stack is 90KB for ZigBee and only 30KB for 6LoWPAN.

Security

Both ZigBee and 6LoWPAN benefit from built-in AES128 encryption, which is part of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard.

Availability and cost

All the major players in the semiconductor industry, such as Texas Instruments, Freescale and Atmel, promote and supply 802.15.4 chips which can be used for either ZigBee or 6LoWPAN.

These same companies even offer free ZigBee stacks. Support for 6LoWPAN stacks seems to be trailing behind ZigBee. There is at least one open source stack available, and companies such as Archrock and Sensinode license their 6LoWPAN stacks.

Conclusions

6LoWPAN is pretty attractive, since it is IP-based—the standard Internet working protocol.

However, ZigBee appears to be more popular and has been adopted by major players in multiple industries…and the ZigBee alliance just introduced ZigBee IP!

ZigBee和6LoWPAN在物联网中应用对比

ZigBee是现今最流行的低成本,低能耗无线Mesh网络标准。ZigBee被应用在家庭自动化（home automation），智能能源（Smart Energy）,商业楼宇自动化（commercial building automation）以及其它低速率无线网络中。ZigBee是架构在802.15.4标准上的技术。ZigBee被设计用来实现物联网（sensor networks）通信标准。

6Lowpan是IPv6 over Low-power wireless Personal Area Networks的首字母缩写。这个名字起源于IETF的6LoWPAN工作组。6Lowpan的物理层和MAC层采用802.15.4标准。与以太网、802.11等传统链路层不同,标准的IPv6协议不能直接构建在IEEE802.15.4MAC层之上。为此,需要在IPv6网络层和IEEE802.15.4MAC层之间加入一个中间层,即适配层,适配层主要功能是压缩、分片与重组、 Mesh路由。网络层采用IPV6协议，传输层采用TCP或者UDP，应用层Socket接口。

6Lowpan和ZigBee都可以用于802.15.4技术标准，下边我们从几个方面比较一下这两个技术。

1. 互操作性 Interoperability

互操作性是我们在选择无线协议时首先要考虑的。从技术术语上看，互操作意味着应用无需了解传输数据包的物理链路。ZigBee定义通行在802.15.4的节点节点进行，对应IP技术是二层。然后定义上层应用通信技术。这意味着ZigBee设备可以和其它ZigBee设备互通，假设这些设备应用同样的profile.

应用一个简单的Bridge 设备，6Lowpan支持与其它802.15.4设备的互通，同时也支持和其它IP网络的互通，如以太网和WIFI。ZigBee网络和非ZigBee网络之间的桥接需要非常复杂的应用层网关。

2.堆栈大小/封包负载Stack size/packet overhead

比较ZigBee和6LoWPAN,必须熟悉数据包结构和开销，因为这直接关系到网络伸缩和数据负载空间。