The relation between ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4-2003 is similar to that between the Wi-Fi Alliance and IEEE 802.11. The ZigBee 1.0 specification was sanctioned on the 14th of December, 2004 and is readily available to members of the ZigBee Alliance. Adopter, which is an entry level membership in the ZigBee Alliance will cost US$ 3500 annually and offer access to the specifications and permission to make products for the market using the specifications. Apart from commercial purposes, the ZigBee specification is available to common man at the ZigBee Specification Download Request. Recently, the ZigBee 2006 specification was stationed in December 2006.
ZigBee works in the scientific, industrial and medical radio bands like 915 MHz in countries such as USA and Australia, 868 MHz in Europe and 2.4 GHz in most jurisdictions worldwide. The most able ZigBee node type is articulated to require at about 10% of the software of a Wireless Internet node or a typical Bluetooth, while the simplest nodes are about 2%. The actual code sizes are very much higher at about 50% of Bluetooth code size. ZigBee chip marketers have announced 128-kilobyte devices.
Till 2006, the retail price of a Zigbee-compliant transceiver is drawing close to $1, and the price for processor, one radio and memory package is about $3. Relatively, before the launch of Bluetooth in 1998, it had a figured price, in high volumes, of $4 - $6. The price of consumer-grade Bluetooth chips is available at a price of under $3 now.
The first stock release is called Zigbee 2004. The 2nd heap release in the 26th of June, 2007, the current one is called 2006, and largely substitutes the MSG/KVP structure used in 2004. The 2004 lot is now almost outdated. The ZigBee Alliance started working on ZigBee 2007, expecting to extend the ZigBee 2006 specification capabilities. The major improvements are optimizing specific network level practicality. There are various new application profiles like Commercial building automation, Automatic Meter Reading and home automation grounded on the cluster library principle.
Zigbee 2007 is at times called pro, but pro is a stack profile, which specifies certain stack settings and required features. ZigBee 2007 at the level of networks is not backwards-compatible with ZigBee 2004 or 2006, although a ZigBee 2004 or 2006 RFD node can conjoin a 2007 network or the other way round. It is actually impossible to mix 2004 or 2006 routers with 2007 routers or coordinator. There are three different types of ZigBee devices like ZigBee coordinator (ZC), ZigBee End Device (ZED) and ZigBee Router (ZR).
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