Feature: A Zigbee Based Home Automation: System Design and Implementation
A Zigbee
Based Home
Automation:
System Design and
Implementation
Fang Yao and Research into the intelligent home has been ongoing since
Shuang-Hua Yang the1980s. Casimir described and predicted the possible
Department of Computer technologies which may be involved in the exciting new
Science, Loughborough home design [1]. In Casimir’s description, some scenarios
University were used to present a brief picture of what the intel-
ligent home can be and what it can do. For instance, the
Bokai Xia home owner can control the whole progress of pipe
College of Information & repair service in the office when the repair person comes
Control Engineering, to the home during day time. Users can subscribe to
University of Petroleum, electronic newspapers, which only contain the news they
East China are interested in. The author also identified two research
areas which need to be explored to improve home
automation system. These are Informatics and Ergonomics.
Due to the high level of complexity and difficulty, which
existed in the early days of the development of the home
electronics system, home automation products in the
early days were not practical for use.
As defined by the famous Moore’s law (the capability of
the computer hardware increases doubly and meanwhile
the cost reduces to approximately half), the continuously
developing technologies have contributed tremendously
to realize home automation systems in the 1990s, such as
energy management units, security systems and lighting
control systems etc. However, the obstacle was that these
systems can only be controlled individually, even those
produced by the same manufacturer. The cross product
compatibility and complete system integration were still
a problem. Technologies such as Power Line Bus, X-10,
Consumer Electronic Bus, and Infrared were proposed as
possible solutions for integrating the system [2].
In the past few years, many innovative technologies such
as Internet, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and smart sensors
have become mature and widely supported by the market.
In particular, embedded systems with microcontrollers are
being used in most of the electronic appliances currently
o the market which provide a convenient opportunity
for intelligent control. Through the integration of relevant
technologies, home automation systems can be properly
designed for the purpose of offering residents comfort
310 • Measurement + Control Vol 41/10 December 2008 www.instmc.org.uk
and security. In this paper, the system requirements are
discussed in the next section. After that the proposed
system architecture is explained. Then the system
implementation is given. The final section presents the
conclusions.
Home Automation System Analysis
Basic Requirements of the home automation system
The basic functionality of a home automation system is
home appliance. In general, the home automation system
should be capable of controlling those devices which can
play important roles in the daily life, such as light control
system, heating system, garden irrigation system, home
security system and so on. Since different systems have
different working styles, the use of home automation
system is to deliver users’ commands to the devices
rather than create a universal mechanism to take the
place of the existing working procedure in the targeting
system. Making devices controllable is the fundamental
purpose of home automation systems. Figure 1 shows the
typical relationship between home automation system and
other home appliances. The home automation system only
gives instruction to “Turn On/Off” appliances without
directly intervening.
Figure 1: Relationship between the home automation system
and home appliances
Intelligence
The term “intelligence” is achieved by adding additional
functions to help the home automation system decide how
to control the appliances. This will be a little more complex
than the “On/Off” signal. Typical algorithms such as PID
(proportional integral derivative) control and machine
state are the most commonly used. Fuzzy logic and neural
network are rapidly developed technologies being used
for many intelligent control systems. Although intelligent
control algorithms have been studied for many years,
they are not widely applied to home automation systems
because of the operating cost and limited hardware capac-
ity. This problem is being solved gradually as a result of the
increased computing capability of MCU (Microcontroller
Unit) and DSP (Digital Signal Processing) [3].
Independent Platform
The lack of system integration is a serious obstacle for
the development of home automation systems. Although
manufacturers have produced efficient products and
achieved satisfactory results for specific applications, these
 Feature: A Zigbee Based Home Automation: System Design and Implementation
products are still not able to integrate together to build a complete
system. One solution to the problem is to use an independent
platform to establish a bridge which can connect different home
appliances and convert their status into a standard format for the
further processing. Figure 2 shows the principle of this platform.
Figure 2: Principle of the independent platform
The independent platform consists of two parts: transfer and signal
conversion. The transfer part is responsible for the communication
between appliance and platform. The signal conversion part is used to
convert data into a standard format which can be understood by the
home appliances and the module for information processing. Then
the home automation system will be capable of dealing with several
home appliances.
Through the analysis, we have an understanding that the home
automation design is a process of system integration. Then the home
appliances can share information on an independent platform and
also be managed.
Home Automation System Architecture
Based on the analysis in the previous section, we design a home
automation system with two main parts: a local system and a remote
Figure 3: Home automation system architecture
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system. The local system consists of four layers: the Smart Sensor
& Actuator layer, the Home Automation Network Transfer layer,
the Data Processing layer and the User Interface layer. The remote
system consists of two layers: the Public Network Transfer layer and
the User Interface layer. The communication between these two
systems is implemented through a “Virtual Home” [4]. Figure 3 shows
the architecture design.
Smart Sensor & Actuator
As the part of the bottom layer, a smart sensor is the most direct
information resource for the home automation system. Modern
MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) technology has accelerated
the emergence of low-cost, high reliable and easy programmable
sensors. The benefits offered by such smart sensors are correct per-
ception to the environmental changes and convenient home status
monitoring. The selection of sensors depends on the purpose of the
application. In the home environment, temperature, humidity, light
level, pressure and gas sensors are the most commonly encountered
types. Current sensor technology is able to support the operations
of many regular sensors working with the voltages from 5-3.3v,
which are vital for the home use because of the cost consideration.
Normal consumers would not purchase high energy cost products.
Figure 4 is the basic model of a smart sensor. Under the control of
the controller, the signal generated by the sensor element will be
conditioned and amplified. In most cases, the processed signal is an
analog signal and can be converted into the format of digital signal
by an ADC (analogue-digital-converter). The digital signal converted
from the sensory data can be easily recognized by the MCU through
the bidirectional sensor bus.
Actuators are the main mechanical parts in a home automation
system. Figure 5 is the principle design of actuator. As well as
the smart sensor, actuator implements its function by receiving
instructions from a connected MCU. Normally any actuator can be
categorized into two main groups: mechanical driver and electronic
Feature: A Zigbee Based Home Automation: System Design and Implementation
Figure 4. Principle model of the smart sensor [3]
driver. If the appliance to be controlled is a mechanical device,
the actuator needs to generate or cause physical power in order
to execute. Typical devices controller can be valve controller and
automatic door controller. If the target device is an electronic device,
the actuator should be an electronic driver. This kind of devices
controller can be microwave oven, air condition, security monitor
system and so on. Figure 5 shows the principle model of the actuator.
Both mechanical and electronic driver can communicate with the
MCU through the bidirectional actuator bus.
Figure 5: Principle model of the actuator
Home Automation Network Transfer
The second layer defined in the system architecture is the home
automation network transfer. The operation of the home network is
for connecting individual component within the home environment.
The approaches to achieve this purpose can be divided into two
main groups: wired and wireless networks [5].
The deployment of home appliances is normally random and
unpredictable.The main drivers of wired network are telephone lines,
power lines, coaxial cable, and optical fibre.The advantages of using
wired carrier are reliable communication, less interference, guaranteed
bandwidth and high security. However, the disadvantages are obvious. It
is not practical to require people to place their appliances in particular
locations i.e. close to power sockets.Therefore, if such interconnection
is proposed, a huge cost for installation and maintenance is unavoidable.
Increasingly, wireless technology is becoming popular and tends to
take the place of wired communication. Without the need to rely on
cable as the communication carrier, wireless network can reduce the
installation price and maintenance cost significantly. More importantly
physical location is no longer a restriction.
Zigbee is a complete radio frequency technology specifically
designed for control purpose with low cost and low data rate. Its
extreme low power consumption requirements (typically requires
2.7-3.6 voltage, 1mw transmit power, 37mA for transmitter/receiver
and 2.6μA in sleep mode) makes it more suitable than WiFi and
Bluetooth for the home automation use.
The Zigbee stack consists of four layers: physical layer, medium
access control layer, network layer and application layer. The physical
and medium access control layer is defined by the IEEE 802.15.4
standard [6]. Table 1 shows the features of IEEE 802.15.4.
312 • Measurement + Control Vol 41/10 December 2008 www.instmc.org.uk
11 channels (868/915 MHz)
Channel 16 channels (2.4GHz)
Addressing 16-bit short address or 64-bit IEEE address
Range 10-20m
Channel access CSMA-CA and slotted CSMA-CA
20 kb/s (868MHz); 40 kb/s (915MHz);
Data rate 250 kb/s (2.4GHz)
Table 1: Features of IEEE 802.15.4 standard
As Zigbee standard is exclusively designed for the purpose of
control, the low data rate would not be a problem since the required
amount of communication would not be huge. For instance, a typical
instruction of “Turn on” a device only requires 1 byte data capacity. It
is uncommon to use a control system to transmit information which is
over several kilobytes data. Therefore the data rate is sufficient for use.
The network layer and application layer are defined by the Zigbee
alliance [7]. The main features of the network layer and application
layer are mesh topology, end point addressing and application
profiles.
Zigbee network supports star, tree and mesh topologies [8]. Due to
the irregular distribution of most applications, mesh topology would
be the most suitable as no specific requirement are needed. The star
and tree topologies have limitation on communication range and
deployment.
As Figure 6 shows, in a mesh topology, Zigbee routers comprise
the mesh network. A special Zigbee node called “coordinator” is
in charge of setting up and maintaining the Zigbee network. Other
nodes called “EndDevice” are basic network devices which connect
to the Zigbee network through one of the nearby routers. Those
routers are designed to be on all the time for transferring message.
End devices only work at the specified time interval (1s, 2s, etc) and
they do not have routing function. When they finish working, they
will enter into a very low power mode to save energy consumption
until the next time they are woken. Each home appliance in the
system will be connected to an end device. By connecting a router
nearby, home appliances can easily become members of a Zigbee
network with a small demand of power. Routers are the backbone
of the Zigbee network. They are responsible for relaying network
messages. Dynamic AODV (Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector
Figure 6: Zigbee mesh network
 Feature: A Zigbee Based Home Automation: System Design and Implementation
Figure 7: Zigbee device addressing
Routing) routing protocol will ensure the network connectivity even
if some of routers fail. The mesh topology provides several potential
paths for router recovery.
Each Zigbee device will be allocated a 16-bit short address when
it joins the network. Therefore, a single Zigbee network can contain
more than 65,000 Zigbee devices, which is much more than most
normal requirements. The concept of “endpoint-address” is a more
dedicated design. Zigbee defines 240 endpoints on its application
layer which exist logically. Then each individual Zigbee device
allows 240 different applications running on it without management
confusion. For example, there is more than one socket on a Zigbee
enabled power extension. If other devices want to communicate with
a certain power socket, its message will reach the Zigbee device via
a 16-bit address and then use an endpoint number to locate the par-
ticular socket which is required. Figure 7 shows this process. Zigbee
protocol provides a flexible addressing mode. The application profiles
are the agreement on messages, message formats and processing
Figure 8: Sample conversion in the data processing and user interface layer
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actions that enable applications residing on separate devices to send
commands, requests data and process commands/requests to create
an interoperable, distributed application. For instance, a power meter
reading application profile contains two commands: “read voltage”
and “read current”. By agreeing upon a common profiles for certain
applications, a power meter reader produced by Manufacturer A can
read out the power meter produced by Manufacturer B easily. In fact,
the introduction of the application profile is not complex. However
the agreement upon common profiles may need wide range discus-
sions within the industry.
Data Processing and User Interface
The data processing layer is responsible for converting the format
of data collected between the upper and lower layers. In general, the
commands sent from the user interface are a combination of user
choices. Before being delivered to the smart sensor/actuator through
the home automation network (Zigbee), they must be formatted
correctly into the corresponding instructions. Conversely, smart sen-
sor data and actuator feedback sent from the bottom layer must be
reorganized before being displayed to users, or else they are merely
meaningless data. Figure 8 shows a sample conversion. When user
wants to turn on the light suited in the lounge, the instruction will
be decomposed into 4 parts: execution code, zone code, appliance/
sensor code and instruction/parameter code. Through the network
transfer, the microcontroller connected to the light in the lounge
will receive the instruction and know what to do after analyzing the
instruction with the same format. Conversely, when the light in the
bedroom wants to report users that it is on, the information will be
formatted into the same 4 parts. Then the controller at the user side
can assemble the received message which means “the light in the
bedroom is on” and display it to the user via the interface.
Virtual Home and Public Network Transfer
Support for remote access is another feature of the modern
intelligent house which benefited from recent development in
network technology. People can connect to their home through the
Internet or phone network. Access from anywhere at anytime means
Appliance
Temperature
sensor
Feature: A Zigbee Based Home Automation: System Design and Implementation
that anybody can be a potential “home intruder”. The virtual home
is to defend against this risk. Two procedures must be completed
before the user commands can be accepted and executed: these are
a security check and a safety check. The security check is to validate
the identification of the incoming user to ensure that whether his/
her authorization is legal. The safety check is to let the incoming
commands in a predefined virtual scenario to ensure the eventual
outcome would not damage the real house appliance. More detail
about the security and safety check can be found in [4].
System Implementation
In the system implementation, the Zigbee network is built using
the Jennic JN5139/5121 module with a Jennic Zigbee stack [9]. The
JN5139/5121 module is a SOC (System-On-Chip) solution which
integrates the microcontroller, memory, and transceiver on one chip.
A temperature sensor and a light controller are used to construct
the layer of smart sensor and actuator. Each of them is connected
to a JN5139/5121 module. Therefore, the sensor and actuator are
capable of transferring data within the Zigbee network, and mean-
while the intelligent control on the device can be done through the
integrated microcontroller. The category of the actuator to which
the light controller belongs is electrical driver.
The execution of the data processing layer was divided into two
areas. In the local area, it is done by the JN5139/5121 module with
a screen display. In the remote area, it is done by a Java application
running on a laptop.
The public network transfer is implemented through combining
a Zigbee module called a Zigbee adapter and a WiFi module. The
incoming instructions from the remote will be delivered to the
WiFi module whose address is allocated by a normal home router.
The standard RS232 port enables the communication between the
Zigbee adapter and the WiFi module. The virtual home works on
this adapter. Then the incoming message can be checked before
entering into the real home automation system. Figure 9 shows the
components connection during the implementation. The Zigbee
network works smoothly with the smart sensors and actuators. The
low packet error rate (<1%) defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
ensures the instruction delivery and feedback collection are accurate.
The WiFi module and Zigbee adapter work well because the RS232
connection is based on a hardware circuit.
During the test of the implementation, some problems were
identified. The first was the Zigbee network response time. To save
the power of the battery, Zigbee device will regularly enter into a
low power mode—sleep. When the end device is sleeping, it won’t
response any request from the Zigbee network until it wakes up
again. Although the interval of sleep is programmable, the shorter the
interval is, the faster the power consumption will be since the radio
receiver is on (37mA on JN5139 or 50mA on JN5121).
The second was interference between Zigbee and WiFi. The speci-
fied working radio frequency for both Zigbee and WiFi is 2.4GHz.
Therefore some channels are overlapped. To avoid interference, WiFi
will change its frequency if similar WiFi signal or serious interference
is detected. Because the bandwidth of each Zigbee channel (2MHz)
is smaller than WiFi (22MHz) and may not be detected by the WiFi
314 • Measurement + Control Vol 41/10 December 2008 www.instmc.org.uk
Figure 9: Components connection during the system implementation
chip, it is possible for the Zigbee signal to be interfered with when
WiFi switches to a close frequency.
The third is the application profile. The application profile we used
in the system implementation was only prepared for the test. In
other words, it is a private profile. If the system is to be developed
further, the establishment of a public profile is essential.
Conclusions
In this paper, we analyze the requirements of a home automation
system and proposed the system architecture which organizes
all aspects into four layers. Zigbee is a key factor as an innovative
wireless technology providing a convenient platform for the
connection of different layers. The issues of power consumption,
wireless interference and application profile identified in the system
implementation should be properly addressed in the development of
any practical application.
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