ZigBee Unveils Comprehensive New Features

The ZigBee Alliance approved new features for the ZigBee specification that will expand product development options available to manufacturers. The new set of specifications is called ZigBee PRO and includes provisions on network scalability, fragmentation, frequency agility, wireless commissioning, and centralized data collection. "The market for wireless sensor networking technology is growing significantly, enabled by a number of factors, one of which is the continuing development of standards such as ZigBee," Sam Lucero, senior analyst with ABI Research, said in a statement. "ZigBee addresses the largest cross-section of WSN market segments, and the new features announced today will further enhance ZigBee's suitability for use in the largest commercial WSN deployments." ZigBee's mesh networking enables communications over the 2.4 GHz frequency. The Alliance is made up of 225 companies from 28 countries.