Zigbee for Home Security Systems

Introduction : We live in a world where attacks and thefts have become very common. Everyone is concerned with the safety of their home, wealth, bank accounts, family, and so on. There are various ways people take care of their home security. The Zigbee technology has become one of the top promising ones for providing home security products. The reason for the popularity is the lower cost of Zigbee products and faster activation.

Zigbee is a low-power and short-distance wireless technology working as per mesh topology. Zigbee devices are activated in about 15ms compared to their Bluetooth counterparts, which take about 3 seconds. Zigbee delivers a data rate of 20kbps, 40 kbps, or 250kbps based on the frequency band chosen.

As shown in the figure, a Zigbee home security system will have basic wireless devices installed in the home. All these devices are interfaced with a wireless router. This router is connected to the internet through an internet service provider’s device.

As and when something abnormal happens, the same will be communicated to the mobile or tablet of the house owner as registered.

Basic components required to form a Zigbee smart home are wireless motion sensors, smoke detectors, and window panels/door magnetic sensors.

The other Zigbee products for home security available are solar-powered wireless fences, wireless temperature and humidity sensors, air quality sensors, sound and light alarms, doorbells, wireless flammable gas detectors, wireless soil humidity sensors, wireless dimmer switches, etc. All these security-based home products are manufactured and supplied by Wulian.

The Zigbee devices and their protocol stack with framework have been designed and developed by manufacturers with security in mind. As we know, security will be effective when it is implemented efficiently.

There are various types of attacks on Zigbee networks. Most Zigbee radio devices will have encryption keys loaded into the RAM when the device is powered on. Since these keys are written on all the devices constituting the Zigbee network, the probability of key change will be very less.

Most attackers utilize the Zigbee serial interface to capture the key and enter into the Zigbee network.

The Zigbee home security system needs to have basic precautions considered before it is used by homeowners.