Zigbee

Why Nordic?

For your Zigbee product

Nordic Semiconductor has low power wireless in its DNA. We ship more than one million ICs every day. With more than 40% market share in Bluetooth LE, we are the Bluetooth Low Energy market leader. We used this experience and expanded it to other technologies, like Zigbee. 

Our devices can be a great choice to base your new product platform on. With different sizes and capabilities our SoCs. The devices are similar to one another which enables excellent code portability between devices. This increases your software reusability and can reliably improve your time to market.
Our SoCs can run both Bluetooth Low Energy and Thread/Zigbee/Bluetooth mesh concurrently. The radio time is time-sliced and shared between the protocols. The scheduling is autonomous and maintains connections. A perfect choice for multi-protocol applications.

The nRF52 and nRF53 Series SoCs can be re-programmed in the factory or in the field with over-the-air device firmware upgrades (OTA DFU). This enables product updates and feature additions in the field. 

Our software offering for Zigbee development is the nRF Connect SDK. The nRF Connect SDK is a software development kit for building products based on our nRF52, nRF53 and nRF91 Series wireless devices. It integrates the Zephyr RTOS and a wide range of samples, application protocols, protocol stacks, libraries and hardware drivers. It includes DSR's industry-proven Zigbee 3.0 stack, ZBOSS, optimized for minimal resource usage and high performance.

Support for Zigbee R22 has been deprecated in nRF Connect SDK v2.8.0 and it will be removed in one of the future releases, following the deprecation policy. As a result, the nRF52833, nRF52840, and nRF5340 SoCs are not recommended for new Zigbee designs. Experimental support for Zigbee R23 is available for the nRF54L Series as an nRF Connect SDK Add-on 

Overview

Our software offering for Zigbee development is the nRF Connect SDK. Our nRF Connect SDK is a scalable and unified software development kit for building products based on all our nRF52, nRF53 and nRF91 Series wireless devices. It offers developers an extensible framework for building size-optimized software for memory-constrained devices, as well as powerful and complex software for more advanced devices and applications. It integrates the Zephyr RTOS and a wide range of samples, application protocols, protocol stacks, libraries and hardware drivers. It includes DSR's industry-proven Zigbee 3.0 stack, ZBOSS, optimized for minimal resource usage and high performance. Support for Zigbee R22 has been deprecated in nRF Connect SDK v2.8.0 and it will be removed in one of the future releases, following the deprecation policy. As a result, the nRF52833, nRF52840, and nRF5340 SoCs are not recommended for new Zigbee designs. Experimental support for Zigbee R23 is available for the nRF54L Series as an nRF Connect SDK Add-on 



Highlighted Zigbee-only examples:

  • Light Control example - Demonstrates a basic Zigbee network with a Coordinator, Router and End Device.
  • CLI Agent example - Demonstrates interaction with a Zigbee application through a command line interface (CLI)
  • OTA Upgrade Client example - Demonstrates how to configure and carry out a secure over-the-air (OTA) device firmware update (DFU)
  • OTA Upgrade Server Example with image transfer over Bluetooth LE - Demonstrates how to transfer a Zigbee OTA image over a Bluetooth LE connection and distribute it in the Zigbee network

Zigbee and Bluetooth LE multiprotocol operation
The multiprotocol capabilities are handled by the IEEE 802.15.4 radio driver. The radio driver is a generic, stack independent and system independent. It contains built-in support for multiprotocol, allowing for concurrent operation of IEEE 802.15.4-based protocols (e.g. Thread, Zigbee) and Bluetooth LE.

Multiprotocol

Zigbee and Bluetooth LE

Our solution offers the option to run multiple protocols on one SoC, either one at the time (switched multiprotocol) or concurrently (dynamic multiprotocol).

Switched multiprotocol is useful in for example smart home applications where the mesh protocol is unknown, it could be Bluetooth mesh, Thread or Zigbee. With switched multiprotocol you can develop a generic application and then adapt to the mesh protocol where the device is used. Another possibility is to leverage Bluetooth Low Energy interoperability and ubiquity. The device is configured and commissioned with Bluetooth LE, with for example a smartphone, and then switches to the appropriate mesh protocol, it being Bluetooth mesh, Thread or Zigbee. Device firmware updates (DFU) can be carried out over Bluetooth LE, while the device typically operates with another protocol.

With dynamic protocol multiple protocols are active at the same time. The radio time is time sliced and shared between the protocols. The scheduling is autonomous and connections are maintained. Leverage Bluetooth LE interoperabilty and ubiquity and bridge into a Bluetooth mesh, Thread or Zigbee mesh with a Bluetooth LE device, such as a smartphone. Use it for commissioning or to simply interact with the mesh network.

Software development kit

for Zigbee

nRF Connect SDK

nRF Connect SDK is a common software development kit for Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, cellular IoT, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee and Matter. It supports all our nRF52, nRF53, nRF70 and nRF91 Series wireless devices.

 
Read more