Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.

com/abstract=1587245
ZigBee Based Home Automation

Prof. Jitendra R. Rana, Prof. S.N.Pawar
J.N.E.C., Aurangabad
State: Maharashtra
India
Mobile No. 9850502810
E-mail: jitendra.r.rana@gmail.com

Abstract
Automation is a vast field and now a day can be
implemented any where depending upon the
application. ZigBee protocol IEEE 802.15.4
wireless standard can be used to set up network
for some specific application purpose. ZigBee
based home automation wireless sensor network
can be implemented with small initial cost and
can be useful to control fans, lights and other
home appliances which operation can be
controlled with the help of a microcontroller.
The home automation can be useful network for
physically handicapped persons as well as old
age person and the same network can be used to
control industrial applications as well.

Keywords:
ZigBee, Home Automation, Light Sensor,
Smoke Sensor, Temperature Sensor, Router,
Coordinator, PIC

Introduction:
Various progressive wireless communication
standards were developed and implemented
during last decade. GSM, WiFi and Bluetooth
are well known by most people in the modern
society. These standards have penetrated into
their daily routine with outstanding popularity.
Even though it seems that all peoples wireless
requirements have fulfilled, it turns on, that they
lack of something like an internet of things
especially in mainstream Home Automation
(HA). The HA systems provide mutual
interoperability between various electronic,
electrical, and power devices as well as
interactive interface for people to control their
operation. These features are very helpful to
optimize and to economize energy consumption.
These technologies make peoples life also
easier, especially for elderly persons and persons
with disabilities. These systems exist of course,
but there are many non-interoperable, expensive,
and often wired systems. Wiring complicates
implementation of the home automation in
buildings which are already built. An invention
of an open and standardized wireless network of
battery powered cheap sensors, actuators, and
control devices which could effectively
communicate with each other involved in new
wireless standard. This standard is ZigBee.
Name of this standard indicates packet routing
strategies in networks with large nodes and zig
zag transmission of data.

ZigBee applications, markets and forecasts
ZigBee standard development is still under
progress, the ZigBee market is opened for many
various applications. The most promising are:
Home Control: Security, Heating,
Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning
(HVAC), Lighting control, Access
control, Irrigation,
Personal health care: Patient monitoring,
Fitness monitoring,
Industrial control: Asset management,
Process control, Energy management,
Environmental,
Building automation: Automatic Meter
Reading (AMR), Security, HVAC,
Lighting control, Access control,
Consumer electronics: Remote control,
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1587245
PC & peripherals: Mouse, keyboard,
joystick,
Environment: Environment monitoring.

Advantages of ZigBee
Some of important advantages are:
Chip vendor independence,
Rapid innovation,
Extremely low cost,
Open standards enable markets,
Easy to deploy,
Excellent performance in environments
with low SNR,
Appropriate range of operation (30 100
m),
Appropriate & Reliable data transfer,
bit-rate: 250 kbps (at 2.4 GHz),
Very low power consumption,
Secure Data Transfer,
ZigBee protocol needs less than 64 kb of
ROM and 2 32 kb of RAM,
ZigBee can be implemented with any
type of microcontroller.

ZigBee Network reference model
Network devices, whether wired or wireless, are
commonly described by the Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) reference model. The
generic seven-layer model is applied to all
network and media types. The adaptation ISO-
OSI network reference model for ZigBee
purposes is illustrated in the figure. ZigBee
network model does not use presentation,
session or transport layer and user application is
directly tied into Application layer (APL). APL
consists of Application sub layer (APS), ZigBee
device object (ZDO) & Application framework.
The ZigBee IEEE802.15.4 standard defines
three frequency bands to employ a standard all
over the world. Out of these thee frequencies
The 2.45 GHz platform is used commonly at
250KBPS data transfer rate. Secure data transfer
is possible with the help of secure service
provider (SSP).The common medium access
control (MAC) Layer provides a variety of
functions of wireless LANs. The MAC Layer
manages and maintains communications
between radio network and access points by
coordinating.

Figure 1:


ZigBee Standard Devices
The ZigBee devices that incorporate ZigBee
radios and its working are,
Coordinator (ZC): Organizes the network
and maintains routing tables,
Routers (ZR): It can talk to the
coordinator, to other routers and to
reduced-function end devices,
End devices (ZED): It can talk to routers
and the coordinator, but not to each
other.
Figure 2:

ZC and ZR are defined as Full-Function Devices
(FFD), which are powered on all the time where
mains power is connected. ZED is defined as
Reduced Function Device (RFD) where the
protocol stack is shorter without ability of
routing but this device could be battery powered.
Sensors and actuators could be connected to
each of these three ZigBee devices. Except
common used mesh topology it is also possible
to use tree or star topology, which take less HW
and SW resources of the microcontroller
(MCU). ZDO defines the role of device in
network (ZC, ZR, or ZED), creates or answers
the connection requests and forms security
connection between ZigBee devices. ZDO
ensures finding the devices in the network and
investigates provided services of them as well.
The main task of NWK is securing of frames
and routing to the end nodes. NWK finds direct
neighbor nodes and saves information about
them. The coordinator NWK ensures
communication and distributes addresses to
newly connected devices. MAC layer
synchronizes the network, ensures access to the
radio channel, checks validity of frame,
acknowledges reception of frame, controls
connection, generates and recognizes the
addresses. APS takes care about binding tables,
which allow matching (binding) of devices
according their provided services.
Communication between devices depends on
ZigBee profile what is device properties
summary and definition of message formatting
so that the devices create practical application.
With the help of ZigBee module & using its
working one can implement home automation
wireless sensor network.

ZigBee Based Home Automation:
The block diagram of proposed home
automation network consist of PIC controller as
central processing unit through which signals
sensed by ZigBee receiver unit are given to the
relay circuit through which various controlling
actions will take place.
The working of sensors will be as follows,
Figure 3:


1. Light Sensor Network
When day light will fall on the light
sensor that will be sensed by the ZigBee
transmitter unit and those signals are
transmitted to the ZigBee receiver unit.
As day light signals are received at
Controller unit it will send signal to relay
circuit through which all the lights of a
house will be turned off.
As the light falling the sensor will
become insufficient then transmitter unit
will again send another signal that will
be sensed at receiver and controller will
provide signal to relay circuit and lights
of the house will turned on.


2. Smoke Sensor Network
When smoke or fire will be sensed by
sensor ZigBee transmitter unit will
provide those signals to the ZigBee
receiver unit. Controller unit will activate
the alarm circuit that fire or smoke in the
house is detected.

3. Temperature Sensor Network
The temperature sensor will sense the
temperature of room or house and if the
temperature goes above the rated value
then those signals are received at
controller unit through receiver and
relays are activated thus fans/AC will get
turned on and when the temperature will
fall below predefined temperature vice
versa action will take place and fans/AC
will be turned off.

4. Display Unit
All the activities which are taking place
with ZigBee device, sensors and
controller will be displayed on the LCD
panel.

Other Components:
Controller:
It is proposed to use PIC 18F4522
microcontroller for implementation of home
automation wireless sensor network to control
the operation. Other family of microcontroller
units can also be used depending upon the use
and complication of automation network. The
work of the microcontroller is to control the
network formed by ZigBee. The signals sensed
and transmitted by coordinator unit which will
be attached to the controller unit are guided to
proper relay circuit. The switching of relay is
also done by controller unit.

Temperature Sensor:
Various types of temperature sensors are
available in the market and sensor depending
upon the use can be implemented. The LM358 is
a commonly used temperature sensor which has
temperature range of 55 to +150C. It can be
used with single power supplies, or with plus
and minus supplies. The LM35 output voltage is
linearly proportional to the Celsius (Centigrade)
temperature. The LM35 thus has an advantage
over linear temperature sensors calibrated in
Kelvin, as the user is not required to subtract a
large constant voltage from its output to obtain
convenient Centigrade scaling. The LM35s low
output impedance, linear output, and precise
inherent calibration make interfacing to readout
or control circuitry especially easy.

Light Sensor
To activate lights in the house light sensor is
required. A simple LDR with proper light
arrangement can be used to operate as a light sensor.
A photo resistor or light dependent resistor or
cadmium sulfide cell is a resistor whose resistance
decreases with increasing incident light intensity. It
can also be referenced as a photoconductor. A photo
resistor is made of a high resistance semiconductor.
If light falling on the device is of high enough
frequency, photons absorbed by the semiconductor
give bound electrons enough energy to jump into the
conduction band. The resulting free electron
conducts electricity, thereby lowering resistance. A
photoelectric device can be either intrinsic or
extrinsic. LDR is a cost effective light sensor which
can be implemented in Home automation sensor
network.

Smoke Sensor
Separate smoke sensors are available in market with
number of features. One can directly use this smoke
sensor to identify the smoke or fire. One can
implement a smoke sensor with the help of opto
coupler sensor. An opto-coupler is a device that uses
a short optical transmission path to transfer an
electronic signal between elements of a circuit,
typically a transmitter and a receiver, while keeping
them electrically isolatedsince the electrical signal
is converted to a light beam, transferred, then
converted back to an electrical signal, there is no
need for electrical connection between the source
and destination circuits. The opto-isolator is simply a
package that contains both an infrared light-emitting
diode (LED) and a photo detector such as a
photosensitive silicon diode, transistor Darlington
pair, or silicon controlled rectifier (SCR). The wave-
length responses of the two devices are tailored to be
as identical as possible to permit the highest measure
of coupling possible. If the smoke or fire is sensed by
this configuration one can turn on the alarm and
water sprinkler system.

Conclusion
ZigBee Based Home Automation Wireless
Sensor Network is useful project for adults and
physically handicapped persons who are not able
to do various activities efficiently when they are
at home and need one assistant to perform those
tasks. With the ZigBee network we can
eliminate the complication of wiring in case of
wired automation. ZigBee Home Automation
provides operating range much higher as
compared to Bluetooth. With the use of ZigBee
Home Automation circuit considerable amount
of power saving is possible and it is flexible and
compatible with future technologies so it can be
easily customized for individual requirements.


References:
[1] ZigBee Alliance Official Site, [online].
Available: www.zigbee.org
[2] IEEE: IEEE Std 802.15.4-2003, [online].
Available: http://standards.ieee.org
[3] ZigBee Alliance, ZigBee Specification,
Available: www.zigbee.org
[4] Acta Electrotechnica et Informatica No. 4,
2007Available:http://www.aei.tuke.sk/pdf/2
007-04/11_Varchola.pdf
[5] PIC 18F452 data sheet Available:
http://www.datasheetsite.com/datasheet/PI
C18F452
[6] LM 35 data sheet Available:
http://www.national.com/ds/LM/LM35.pdf