Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

Hung Bui — Thu, 28 May 2020 07:59:35 GMT

I don't see a reason for having them running concurrently. Switching should also work without user interaction. You can leave the device running in Zigbee checking for ZC or ZR for, let's say 30 seconds and then switch back to proprietary/RF4CE in the background. What important here is that if you need to have 2 protocols running at the same time or not. If not, then you are free to switch to any protocol you like after you checked that there is no current Zigbee network in the area.

The challenge of having 2 networks running at the same time is that it requires timeslot mechanism to switch between protocols rapidly without interrupting the communication. It's not supported natively in the ZBoss stack that we used in nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee. There is support for timeslot API in Zephyr (NCS) project here: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrfxlib/blob/master/mpsl/include/mpsl_timeslot.h

But we haven't done any test on multiprotocol on that platform.

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

whyeye — Thu, 28 May 2020 06:38:45 GMT

The main point is that Zigbee requires at least another ZC or ZR to be operational. In the case that a customer does not already have a Zigbee network at home, I would like to give them the choice of using the product directly from a remote control. Dynamic multiprotocol would obviously be the best as it wouldn't require the end user to do anything, but switched would be acceptable as well. In this case, I take it that it is only possible to implement multiprotocol on 802.15.4 based protocols?

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

Hung Bui — Tue, 26 May 2020 13:14:15 GMT

Could you clarify that you want to do Zigbee and RF4CE at the same time or only switching between the protocols ?
You mentioned that the proprietary protocol is to be used if the customer doesn't have Zigbee coordinator. Would that meant RF4CE won't be used at the same time as Zigbee ?

If you only need to switch between the protocol I don't see a big issue here as both of them based on top of 802.15.4.

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

whyeye — Tue, 26 May 2020 09:11:18 GMT

Hi Hung,

Thanks for your reply. We would like to avoid using both ZigBee and Bluetooth mainly due to the high licensing costs. Is it possible to do dynamic multiprotocol with RF4CE? That might be another option for us.

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

Hung Bui — Tue, 26 May 2020 08:25:40 GMT

Hi Whyeye,

As suggested by Andrew, you can consider running Zigbee and Bluetooth Low Energy concurrently. We have an example that work out of the box with this setup. You can have a look here: https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/sdk_tz_v4.1.0/zigbee_multi_examples.html?cp=7_3_3_8_4

More detail about the dynamic multiprotocol can be found here: https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/sdk_tz_v4.1.0/ble_154_multiprotocol.html?cp=7_3_4_0

Do you have a requirement on a specific proprietary you need to use or BLE would be a good option ?

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

whyeye — Thu, 21 May 2020 10:07:26 GMT

Thanks. I did look at various documentation but it was a bit unclear as to whether one can do dynamic multiprotocol with ZIgBee and proprietary RF. It seems most of the examples are done with Bluetooth as one of the protocols. The compatibility table seems to suggest that it is possible but I haven't been able to find any other information or examples.

RE: Possible to support ZigBee and proprietary RF concurrently?

awneil — Thu, 21 May 2020 09:17:07 GMT

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-wireless/Multiprotocol

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-wireless/Multiprotocol-2_0