The wireless market has been traditionally dominated by high end technologies, but so far Wireless Personal Area Networking products have not been able to make a significant impact on the market. While some technologies like the Bluetooth have been quite a success story, in the areas like computer peripherals, mobile devices, etc, they couldn’t be expanded to the automation arena. This led to the invention of the wireless low data rate personal area networking technology, Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4), for the home/Industrial automation. It has received a tremendous boosting among the industry leaders and critics have been quick enough to indicate that no less than 80 million zigbee products will be shipped by the end of 2006[8]. A group of companies, called the Zigbee Alliance, have been working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked monitoring and control products, based on 802.15.4. The alliance has been putting considerable weight on the possible success of this technology. Industry leaders like Ember, FreeScale, HoneyWell, Phillips, Motorola, Samsung, ZMD, and a hundred such companies are backing it. Also the alliance is striving to make this technology applicable worldwide by involving corporates around the globe. Currently the alliance is worth over a hundred other companies and is continually growing. The size of this alliance cannot ensure its popularity and widespread use; however, it does indicate a commitment of the industry to focus on one technology rather than going haphazardly in designing their automation products based on self-developed technologies.
