TI Predicts Rapid ZigBee Adoption

• Posted: Wednesday, January 10, 2007
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Gadget

By Rhonda Wickham

Although Texas Instruments has had its ZigBee chip - the CC2420 - available since November 2003 and has cornered more than 50% of the market with its chips, it is still looking forward to 2008 when it thinks the application will really take off.

This week at CES, TI announced that it has achieved compliance for its Z-Stack, which is certified for the CC2420 transceiver and the CC2430 System-on-a-Chip (SoC). Z-Stack received Golden Unit status, which is awarded to the first platform to implement the latest version of ZigBee standard and to pass independent testing by one of two ZigBee qualified testing labs. These Golden Units are then established as reference points for future ZigBee Compliant Platform testing.

Although the ZigBee concept was introduced more than three years ago as a way to wirelessly control lighting, the building automation sector is actually looking at it as a way to assist with energy-saving concerns for commercial locations, says Erik Markman, TI's product marketing manager for ZigBee and Low Power Wireless. Markman expects that once commercial applications, which he believes will first be established buildings as opposed to new sites, have started implementing ZigBee, the residential market will soon follow.

Although the implementation and deployment of ZigBee has seemingly taken longer than other new, low-power technologies, Michael Lanz, WW Precision Analog's marketing manager for TI's High Performance Analog and Semiconductor Group, says he thinks ZigBee will grow into a strong application sector, with legs to evolve into other areas of wireless remote control that haven't even been considered yet.

Source: Wirelessweek

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