Wireless Home Networking - Index of

356
Part V: The Part of Tens
Because they use mesh networking technologies, where signals can bounce
from device to device throughout the home (like a frog crossing a pond on
top of lily pads), the more ZigBee or Z-Wave devices you have in your home,
the better the network works (a frog can hop across a pond covered with
lily pads a lot more easily than it can get across a pond with the pads spread
far apart). If your power utility puts ZigBee or Z-Wave in your home for
energy-savings purposes, you can take advantage of these devices when you
add your own home control and automation devices. Remember, with mesh
networking systems, the more you have, the better they work!
Introducing Wibree
A new, even lower-powered (think watch batteries, not AC power) technology
is arriving that can embed wireless control and networking in anything:
Wibree. Think of Wibree as a low-power option for Bluetooth; Wibree and
Bluetooth technology are complementary technologies. Wibree even uses the
same antenna and 2.4 GHz frequency band as Bluetooth.
Bluetooth technology (which we discuss in Chapter 15) is well suited for
streaming and data-intensive applications such as file transfer, and Wibree is
designed for applications where ultra-low-power consumption, small size,
and low cost are needed. So Wibree in many cases picks up where Bluetooth
leaves off.
Whereas your cell phone might talk to your car via Bluetooth, your car keys
might have Wibree inside them. That way, when you lose your keys, you can
search the house for them by querying Wibree gateways to see if anyone
detects them.
Bluetooth and Wibree are wireless personal area networks (WPANs) with a
star topology, and thus are truly designed for PAN. ZigBee, driven by its focus
on wireless monitoring, lighting control, energy conservation, and so on,
is a mesh technology in which one fixed device communicates wirelessly with
another. So you might see all of these in your home.
How might you use Wibree?
� Sports and wellness: Sports watches that connect to sensors located
on the body, shoes, and other fitness gear can gather data on heart
rate, distance, speed, and acceleration and send the information to a
mobile phone.
� Healthcare: Wibree-driven sensors can be built into stand-alone healthmonitoring
devices that can send vital health-related information (blood
pressure, glucose level) to Bluetooth-Wibree dual-mode devices (such as
mobile phones and personal computers), which can process this information
and send alerts to the mobile phones of patients and caretakers.