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EMERGING WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES - ZIGBEE and RFIDBy Guillermo Ortiz-Caceres ABSTRACT Dating back to 1887 when Heinrich Hertz, a professor of physics at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, Germany, first produced radio waves, the world of wireless communication has been growing at an exponential rate. (Sparkmuseum.com, 2007). In late 1890s the Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Company was founded and the company’s technology was being put to many practical uses, including vessel communication, shortwave secret military transmissions, and commercial telegraphy. The rescue and survival of Titanic passengers has been accredited to the wireless transmission of distress calls over 3000 kilometers of ocean. (WirelessHistory.org, 2007) In 1940 the Handie-Talkie SCR536 portable amplitude modulated two-way radio, later used in World War II battle fronts, was developed by the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. Less than 100 years after the first radio wave was produced the world's first commercial handheld cellular phone, the Motorola (News - Alert) DynaTAC phone became available to consumers in 1984. (Motorola, Inc., 2007). Since then wireless technology has taken unprecedented leaps in technological advancements and explosive growth in consumer wireless products. The market’s appetite for wireless technology is huge, ranging from the now ubiquitous cellular telephones and wireless laptops to the emerging technologies in automated homes devices. In 2006 1.02B cell phone units were sold with an expected growth rate of up to 15% in 2007. (The Inquirer, 2007). The author addresses two of the technologies that he perceives as being less known but nonetheless soon to be as prevalent as the Bluetooth technologies. Addressing security issues of these new technologies is outside the scope of this paper and the author only addresses the technologies as they apply directly to the paper. ZIGBEE Imagine this scenario. You are on your way home and the spouse calls you on your new iPhone (News - Alert) to tell you to pick up paté and pesto for the dinner party you are hosting that night. You know for a fact that there are other things that you need. So you pick up your new IPhone, select a nifty new ZigBee add-on and scroll down to “My Refrigerator” to see if you have any wine left in the fridge. Your IPhone not only tells you that you only have one bottle of Marques de Cáceres Rioja wine, but that you also have no caviar. Far fetched? Actually, it is a very plausible concept that is being seriously considered by refrigerator companies and home automation pioneers. But most people don’t realize this kind of new technology is being used and how it can affect the privacy that we as American seek and have written into our laws. At the forefront of industrial and home automation is the ZigBee standard. ZigBee is the fourth in the series of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE  ) 802.15 standards ratified in 2004 for embedded application software. It addresses low rate wireless personal area networks and provides specifications for devices that have low data rates, consume very low power and are thus characterized by long battery life. Bluetooth, which is now widespread and is IEEE (News - Alert)’s 802.15.1 protocol, addresses high data rate applications such as voice, video and LAN communications. (IEEE 802.15.4 Summary, 2004) ZigBee technology was developed to meet the growing demand for capable wireless networking between numerous low-power devices. As opposed to Bluetooth technology that focuses on connectivity between user devices that exchange large packets, such as laptops and phones, ZigBee is designed to provide highly efficient connectivity between small packet devices. HOW IT WORKS Due to its low power output, ZigBee devices can sustain themselves on small batteries for many months, or even years, making them ideal for install-and-forget purposes, such as most small household systems. Predictions of forthcoming ZigBee integration look to a near future when upwards of sixty ZigBee devices may be found in an average American home, all communicating with one another freely and regulating common tasks seamlessly. (ZigGeek.com, N.D.) The wide range of applications that would use devices with low data rates is limitless and would include: Building-automation controls Intruder/fire alarms Thermostats Remote (wireless) switches Home Automation Video/audio remote controls Industrial and Transportation Automation Tracking of shipping containers The specified maximum range of operation for ZigBee devices is 250 feet, substantially further than that used by Bluetooth capable devices. ZigBee devices operate at the Network and Application Support (APS), Media Access Control (MAC ) and physical layers. (Texas Instruments, 2007) The network layer permits network scalability with low power transmitters. This layer can handle and extremely large numbers of hosts. The APS sub-layer maintains network tables that discovers the devices in a self-configuring network and enables establishing communications between two devices. (Tutorials.com, 2007) The MAC layer permits use of several topologies without introducing complexity and is also meant to work with large numbers of hosts. The physical layer accommodates high levels of integration by using direct sequence to permit simplicity in the analog circuitry and enable less expensive implementations. ZigBee chipsets are meant to be built into end devices. There are three different ZigBee device types that operate on these layers in any self-organizing application network. (Tutorials.com, 2007) 1. The ZigBee coordinator node: There is one ZigBee coordinator in each network that acts as the router to other networks. It is designed to maintain routing tables and store information about the network. 2. The full function device (FFD): The FFD is an intermediary router transmitting data from other devices. It needs lesser memory than the ZigBee coordinator node, and entails lesser manufacturing costs. It can operate in all topologies and can act as a network coordinator. The author likens this to a layer 4 network switch. 3. The reduced function device (RFD): The RFD is the actual embedded chipset in the device. It is just capable of talking in the network and it cannot relay data from other devices. It requires significantly less memory, (no flash, very little ROM and RAM), and is less expensive than an FFD. This device talks only to a network coordinator and can be implemented very simply in a star topology. The low battery consumption of ZigBee, which allows devices to operate for extended periods, operates in two modes: receive/transmit and sleep. ZigBee nodes only wake up at periodic intervals to check for network availability and messages, and then return to a sleep mode after the messages have been received or if none are available. A 2005 analyst report issued by IT Facts showed that ZigBee chipset were poised to grow by 200% from 2004 to 2009 with annual shipments surpassing 150M units in 2009. It’s not unconceivable that we will soon, if not already, find ZigBee chipsets in home automation, showing up in home video and audio remote controls, light switches, fire and smoke detectors, thermostats, appliances in the kitchen, grocery packaging, landscaping, and security systems. (IT Facts, 2005) RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification technology which relies on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. (IEEE Xplore, 2006). An RFID tag is an object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radio waves. Most RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a radio frequency signals and perhaps other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal. An emerging technology called chipless RFID allows for discrete identification of tags without an integrated circuit, thereby allowing tags to be printed directly onto assets at lower cost than traditional tags. (TracerLock, 2007) According to Spychip.com, RFID proponents are pushing to have loyalty cards, ATM cards and other forms of identification cards RFID enabled with chips like this. Spychips.com has campaigned that banks, retailers, supermarkets and governments could find out everything about a consumer when they walk past a reader device since line-of-sight is not necessary to access the information. To find out ways that RFID tags can be used to track your whereabouts go to <http://www.spychips.com/ faqs.html>. (Spychips.com, 2007) On February 2007 Hitachi (News - Alert) introduced the world's smallest and thinnest RFID tags. Raved as tiny miracles of miniaturization, the RFID chips measured just 0.05 x 0.05 millimeters. Hitachi’s previous record-holder, the µ-chip (pronounced mu-chip), is just 0.4 x 0.4 millimeters. These new RFID “powder” chips are 64 times smaller than the µ-chips, with both having embedded antennas. Consumer applications range from RFID embedded paper currency to products to deter theft. RFID readers built into retail store doorways would immediately alert security. (Technovelgy.com, 2007) And since the devices are programmable, the store’s point of sales software can detect which items passed the doors without being paid for. CONCLUSION There is no doubt that technology is moving at an ever accelerating rate. As manufacturers apply the technology to the manufacturing of products, product identification, industrial and home automation, emergency first response services and the medical field, there is a growing stigma that the same technology can lead to invasion of privacy and security concerns. This paper was meant to only highlight two of these technologies and bring awareness that we are becoming ever increasingly reliant on technology. Government and policy making officials need to be cognizant of the implication of applying technology without restraints to allow adequate controls to guarantee privacy and security. REFERENCES IEEE Xplore. (2006). RFID Application in the Third-party Logistics Industry. Retrieved 23 July 26, 2007 from <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4077693> ITFacts (2005) From 2004 to 2009 ZigBee node shipments to grow at 200% a year. Retrieved 29 May, 2007 from <http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P3739> Motorola Inc. (2007). Motorola History. Retrieved on July 9, 2007 from <http://www.motorola.com/content.jsp?globalObjectId=7632-10812>. Technovelgy LLC. (2007). RFID Powder - World's Smallest RFID Tag. Retrieved on 30 May, 2007 from <http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=939>. Texas Instruments. (2007). MSP430 Ultra-Low-Power MCU and Low-Power RF Devices. Retrieved on June 1, 2007 from <http://focus.tij.co.jp/jp/lit/ml/slyt265a/slyt265a.pdf>. TheInquirer.Net. (2007). A Billion Cell Phones Sold in 2006. Retrieved on July 02, 2007 from <http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38000>. TracerLock.com. (2007). Chipless RFID. Retrieved on July 02, 2007 from <http://www.tracerlock.com/php/news-monitor-sample_promo.php?id=4>. Sparkmuseum.com. (2007). The Discovery of Radio Waves. Retrieved on July 11, 2007 from <http://www.sparkmuseum.com/HERTZ.HTM>. Spychips.com. (2007). Images of RFID Tags. Retrieved on July 11, 2007 from <http://www.spychips.com/faqs.html>. Spychips.com. (2007). Frequently Asked Questions About RFID. Retrieved on July 11, 2007 from <http://www.spychips.com/faqs.html>. Tutorial-reports.com (2007) ZigBee Tutorial. Retrieved June 1, 2007 from <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-zigbee.htm>. University of Wisconsin. (2004). ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 Summary. Retrieved on July 9, 2007 from <http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~suman/courses/838/papers/zigbee.pdf>. Wirelesshistory.org. (2007). Wireless History. Retrieved on July 11, 2007 from <http://wirelesshistory.org/fullscreen.htm>. WiseGeek.com (N.D.) What is ZigBee? Retrieved June 1, 2007 from <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-zigbee.htm>. Zigbee Alliance (News - Alert). (2007). ZigBee Enables Smart Buildings of the Future Today. Retrieved on July 9, 2007 from <http://www.zigbee.org/en/resources/whitepapers.asp>. Guillermo L. Ortiz-Cáceres is a graduate student at the College of Technology and Computer Science East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina |