Routing Protocols in Zigbee Based networks: A Survey

Int. Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engg.

Vol. 2, Spl. Issue 1 (2015)

e-ISSN: 1694-2310 | p-ISSN: 1694-2426

Routing Protocols in Zigbee Based networks: A Survey 1

Harmanpreet Kaur, 2Amol P Bhondekar

1

M.E. Scholar, NITTTR Chandigarh, 2Principal Scientist, CSIR-CSIO Chandigarh. harmanpreetz14@gmail.com

Abstract: ZigBee is the new standard developed wireless personal area network (WPAN) based on IEEE 802.15.4 for low cost, low data rate and low power consumption wireless network. In present times, zigbee has become a hot topic for research and development all over the world. This paper briefly describes various ZigBee network topologies including star, cluster tree and mesh topology and further introduces different ZigBee routing protocols such as AODV, AODVjr, Hierarchical, Integrated and Enhanced hierarchical routing protocol (EHRP).

self-organizing and self-healing. Applications such as industrial control and monitoring, wireless sensor networks, asset and inventory tracking use this topology. It also allows multiple hops to route messages from one device to other in the network. It can provide reliability by multipath routing.

Keywords: Zigbee, Routing protocols, Networks, topologies.

I. INTRODUCTION In December 2000, an IEEE 802 WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) group was founded to define the wireless protocol for WPAN. A new protocol IEEE 802.15.4 was released in December 2003 for low power and low cost wireless networking for domestic and industrial environments. Further the ZigBee Alliance released its first specification in December 2004, based upon the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer of IEEE 802.15.4 protocol [1].

ZigBee defines three types of devices: ZigBee coordinator, ZigBee router and ZigBee end device. The ZigBee specification defines network layer, application layer and correlative security strategies, based upon the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer of IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. The definition of ZigBee network layer includes network topology, network establishment, network maintenance, routing and its maintenance [2].

Typical applications of IEEE 802.15.4 devices are: i) industrial control, ii) environmental and structural health monitoring; iii) home automation, entertainment and toys; iv) security, location and asset tracking; v) emergency and disaster response.

In this paper, Part II explains various network topologies in Zigbee network. Part III analyses various routing protocols at the network layer developed to optimize network performance in terms of various parameters such as energy efficiency, delay, security, etc. Finally conclusions are drawn in the last part.

Figure 4: Zigbee Network topologies[11]

In tree topology, coordinators still initiate and maintain the network. But routers are used to enlarge the network.

Routers control the flow of data by using hierarchical routing strategies in the network. They also may imply beacon enabled network defined in IEEE 802.15.4 for periodical data transmission. It is a special case of mesh network in which most devices are FFDs (Full Function Device) and an RFD (Reduced Function Device) may connect to a cluster-tree network as a leave node at the end of a branch [1,3].

II. ZIGBEE NETWORK TOPOLOGIES In the star topology, the communication is established between devices and a single central controller, called the PAN coordinator. The PAN coordinator may be mains powered while the devices will most likely be battery powered. The star topology is not preferred in sophisticated wireless sensor networks. The star topology of ZigBee is mainly designed for the simple communication from one node to several nodes.

The mesh topology has a PAN coordinator. Any device can communicate with any other device as long as they are in range of one another. A mesh network can be ad hoc,

III. ZIGBEE ROUTING PROTOCOLS Various Routing algorithms can be implemented on the Zigbee network layer like AODV, AODVjr, Cluster tree, EHRP, multipath and so on which will be discussed in detail in this part.

The AODV (Ad-Hoc On demand Distance Vector) routing is a pure on-demand route acquisition algorithm. The node which needs the connection broadcasts a route request RREQ to its neighbors who re-route the message and safeguard the node from which they received the message.

Along with its own sequence number and the Route Request ID, the source node includes in the RREQ the most recent sequence number it has for the destination.

The path cost comparison of packets with the same RREQ allows choosing best path at the moment and discarding anything worse. When a node receives a message and it has an entry corresponding to the destination in its routing table, it returns a RREP through the reverse path to the requesting node. So, the source sends its data through this path to the destination with the minimum number of hops [4, 5].

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NITTTR, Chandigarh

EDIT-2015

Int. Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engg.

Vol. 2, Spl. Issue 1 (2015)

In the ZFA protocol, if one node has no route to one destination node, it broadcasts the data of transport layer through the way of flooding. The ZFA protocol combines routing discovery with data transmission. The destination node sends the packet of route layer along the reverse direction after receiving packet, and then the routing is established [6].

AODVjr removes form the AODV specification the sequence numbers, gratuitous RREP, hop count, Hello message, RREP, precursor lists. In AODVjr, if communications are unidirectional, the destination sends Connect messages to the source. If data traffic is bidirectional, no additional messages are used. In any case, a source detects a link break in a route when it receives no messages from the destination [1].

An AODVjr routing protocol with multiple feedback policy [7] by means of processing main message during route discovery. The source node starts the route discovery, the destination node processes every Route Request (RREQ) and sends every Route Reply (RREP) as feedback information to the source node, and the source node processes multiple RREP messages for routing decision. The improved AODVjr changes the routing decision commander from destination to source and make a proactive routing decision on the basis of multiple feedback information.

In ZBR (Zigbee Routing) or Hierarchical Routing Protocol (HERA), during the establishment of the network, the ZigBee coordinator determines maximum number of children routers a parent may have as children. In addition, each node has a "depth" which is the minimum number of hops to reach the coordinator using only parent-child link.

For constructing the path, the source node checks if the recipient is one of its descendants because it knows the network address in the block of its child node. Otherwise, the source and the parent node send the data to its parent.

The downlink of information is provided through a technique for determining the successor based on the ZigBee router address, depth and address of the node [4].

In the integrated routing [8], a node falls into one of the following two classes: routing node plus (RN+), which has enough memory to perform AODVjr routing; routing node minus (RN-), which has limited memory and only performs cluster-tree routing. While an RN node always follows the cluster-tree, an RN+ node can either follow the cluster-tree or dynamically discover an AODV route, depending on various factors such as session duration and tolerable route discovery delay.

In ZiCL (Zigbee Cluster Label) [4], the ZigBee network is divided into one or more logical clusters and then a unique Cluster Label is assigned to each cluster where the Cluster Label represents addresses of all nodes in a logical cluster.

Within each cluster, nodes can communicate with each other in at most four hops. Every node is associated with a Cluster Label and cluster heads are connected with each other via gateway nodes, which are used to communicate with an adjacent cluster. According to one hop neighbor information, nodes which are connected with other clusters can identify own role as a gateway.

In the shortcut tree routing[9], remaining hops from an arbitrary source to the destination are calculated using the hierarchical addressing scheme in ZigBee, and each source or intermediate node forwards a packet to the neighbor NITTTR, Chandigarh

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e-ISSN: 1694-2310 | p-ISSN: 1694-2426

node with the smallest remaining hops in its neighbor table.

ZigBee Multipath Hierarchical Tree Routing (Z-MHTR) is a multipath extension of the ZBR and the built paths are node disjoint, used simultaneously to route data. Data packets are routed to the sink (tree root) on up to three disjoint paths. These routing decisions are performed onthe-fly thanks to the ZigBee tree topology properties without requiring the traditional discovery phase using RREQs [10].

IV. CONCLUSION In this paper, after a literature survey on the Zigbee technology, an in-depth knowledge about the topologies and routing mechanism was acquired. The paper presented different routing protocols developed so far to improve performance of Zigbee networks.

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