Bluetooth vs ZigBee

I've been working on trying to understand the relative position of ZigBee vs Bluetooth for quiet a while.
Interesting post from Jeff Nolan on the ZigBee front.

ZigBee could end up being the most important nearband wireless network technology in the years to come. Designed as a low power consumption and low cost technology, it's also capable of handling really large sensor networks, up to 65,000 nodes, as well as having high security built in from the onset to prevent tampering with or eavesdropping on the networks by intruders...

The power consumption feature in the specification is a really important part of the technology. A ZigBee device will sleep more than it's active, this is call a "low duty cycle", and with the active power at 10mW and the sleep power at 10uW, a AAA battery will power a ZigBee device for 37,000 hours on a duty cycle of .1 percent...

Yes, but...
... as my friends at Baracoda have demonstrated, you can ship a Bluetooth based Value Added Stack to manages the consumption issues in a similar sleep/wake-up way, and dramatically extends the battery life a Bluetooth device.

Comments

[jeff]

but the range of bluetooth is still to "nearband" for digital home applications. Zigbee gives you a range of up to 150 feet, more than enough for most home applications, and with repeaters it's enough for commercial apps as well.

[Rajiv Dulepet]

Does it make sense to compare Zigbee to RFID? What would be the architectural difference between Zigbee tag and RFID tag?

[Michael]

Does anyone know of any models for Zigbee out there???
I have seen some ns-2 models, but what about OPNET???

Also, any good papers comparing Bluetooth and Zigbee.

[Gordon]

I too am looking for ZigBee models particularly in OPNET. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jerry Hahn]

www.Techworld.com, March 2005, there is a techie comparison between ZigBee and Bluetooth by Wexler. Bluetooth still has disadvantages despite the sleep wake mode programming feature possibility. Among those are the connectivity time and the cost per unit to implement. From my research, for low data volumes such as those in home apps, ZigBee makes more sense.

Jerry Hahn
CTO/COO
LIFETECHniques Inc.

[eric]

I am looking for a Bluetooth module for Opnet, I have found one called Suitetooth but can't get it to compile without errors in version 11.5. any suggestions?

thanks,
eric hodge

[steven davies]

Hi,do you know where I can find Magic Band wrap BT430 EX with non Bluetooth device?
Thank you:)

[Lolis]

Have you already seen the Wibree protocol, it seens to be a future of Bluetooth in a ULP context, they plan to give it's specifications in middle 2008, do you know if Wibree and Zigbee are going to be competitors or if there are different applications for each of them?

[buy viagra]

i like this part of the blog:"The power consumption feature in the specification is a really important part of the technology. A ZigBee device will sleep more than it's active, this is call a "low duty cycle", and with the active power at 10mW and the sleep power at 10uW, a AAA battery will power a ZigBee device for 37,000 hours on a duty cycle of .1 percent..." is very good

[company logo design]

Don't know what is wrong what is rite but i know that every one has there own point of view and same goes to this one..

[Dissertation help]

Its great to see that people are sharing quite profitable information with each other and now we can move our selves to a new era.

[jordan 1 flight low]

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored, and sorrows end.Do you like it?

[Generic Viagra]

I don't have much confidence on bluetooth devices, because it doesn't have so much range and it consumes a lot of energy

[Logo Design]

Thanks a lot for a bunch of good tips. I look forward to reading more on the topic in the future as well.