December 16, 2015 –ZigBee and EnOcean will combine EnOcean energy harvesting wireless solutions with ZigBee 3.0 to extend energy harvesting wireless communication to a broader range of self-powered IoT sensor solutions. These solutions use the surrounding environment as their energy source, making battery-less connected devices a reality.
This will build on the EnOcean Alliance’s already strong position with more than 1,500 interoperable products available for home and commercial building automation, and expand it bringing energy harvesting wireless communication to many more applications in the IoT and consumer arenas. It will also take advantage of the newly ratified ZigBee 3.0 standard, which enables battery-less devices to securely join networks across a variety of energy harvesting applications. As a result, the industry will have new opportunities for creating intelligently connected buildings and developing other solutions across a variety of applications.
The collaboration is also designed to provide a foundation to seamlessly bring data to the IoT frameworks of other industry initiatives, in order to facilitate interoperable communication from the sensor to the cloud.
A Technical Task Force will be built of ZigBee Alliance and EnOcean Alliance representatives to define the technical specifications required to combine standardized EnOcean Equipment Profiles (EEPs) with the ZigBee 3.0 solution, which operates in the worldwide IEEE 802.15.4 2.4 GHz standard.
The alliances plan to complete definition of this technical specification and share details of associated collaborative marketing and business activities in the second quarter of 2016. ZigBee 3.0 is the first single unified, open and complete wireless IoT product development solution of its kind. It extends all the way from the physical layer to the application network layer, and includes certification and branding for improved interoperability across a growing range of market segments.
