Energy harvesting moves to 2.4GHz for IoT designs

Martin: new applications for self-powered devices

ZigBee 3.0 will be an open specification that is intended to support energy harvesting wireless communications operating in the 2.4GHz for the first time.

“We are very excited that the EnOcean Alliance is bringing its energy harvesting expertise and widely deployed device profiles into the ZigBee 3.0 ecosystem,” said Tobin Richardson, president and CEO of the ZigBee Alliance.

“Our goal with ZigBee 3.0 is to provide a unifying IoT standard that simplifies product development while reducing industry fragmentation and unlocking new market growth opportunities. This agreement is a first important step down that path,” said Richardson.

The aim is to proliferate battery-less device technology into 2.4GHz wireless systems operating under the ZigBee standard. Both the EnOcean energy-harvesting interface and ZigBee wireless standard have been adopted in the building automation market and now the hope is to move this to consumer applications where ZigBee already has a foot hold.

According to Graham Martin, chairman of the EnOcean Alliance,  support for the 2.4GHz frequency band important for bringing energy harvesting to consumer products.

“This will give our members access to new regions and additional fields of applications to grow their business for self-powered innovations. It adds to the EnOcean Alliance’s established market of smart buildings in the sub-1 GHz frequency,” said Martin.

ZigBee 3.0, the latest version of the wireless standard has been tuned to support IoT product development. To support the design process the standard now extends all the way from the physical layer to the application network layer, and includes certification and branding for interoperability in different markets, which is a feature of IoT.