ZNM is designed for ZigBee®, which is the mass market communication protocol for home automation, sensor networks and energy management systems with a large ecosystem of interoperable products. Operation at 2.45 GHz makes it a truly global solution, and the mesh network ensures in-house coverage. The RF module contains the ZNM network layer making it easy to build an interoperable product for any application profile. Radiocrafts has a wide range of modules at a low cost, which are design to be interoperable with ZigBee®, ranging from compact low power consumption modules used in battery operated devices, to high RF power modules with integrated antenna or external antenna connector.

RC24XX Family

The RC 24xx platform has options with an integrated antenna -AT and integrated antenna connector -CT.  The Family includes HP variants for increased range.

Configuring a ZNM Network

The ZNM module uses a mesh network topology on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY/MAC layer. In the mesh network the devices have different roles. In a network you will always have one (and only one) Coordinator and possible several Routers and End Devices.

• The Coordinator is the root/master of the network and starts the network and later holds information about the network
• A Router (Full Functional Device – FFD from IEEE 802.15.4) is an always-on device that including routing functionality.
• An End Device (Reduced Functional Device – RFD from IEEE 802.15.4) is a device with no routing capabilities, but with sleep capability. Such a device can sleep most of the time and only poll the network at regular interval.

The network is identified by a unique PAN-ID.  This ID can be written to the module during configuration. Writing 0XFFFF to the PAN ID will make the Coordinator chose a random PAN-ID (after scan) and Routers/End Devices to join a random PAN.

The ZNM utilizes acknowledgement and retransmission on the MAC layer to ensure a reliable link. This means that each point-to-point communication will include an acknowledgement message. But in addition, an application end-to-end acknowledgement can be included.

The ZNM protocol includes powerful AES128 encryption. The encryption key can be preconfigured in each device or it can be set in the coordinator and distributed to the rest of the network depending on the security requirements.

In practice the network is established by sending some simple API commands to the ZNM module from a host MCU over the UART or SPI interface. The self-configuration and self-healing properties of the mesh network will make it a very robust network even when the environment change and new routes need to be established.