Building Gateway Interconnected Heterogeneous ZigBee and WiFi Network Based on Software Defined Radio

The ZigBee Alliance Lab proposes the concept of ZigBee-WiFi network. ZigBee-WiFi network has a broad development space when combined with the advantages of ZigBee and WiFi. However, since ZigBee and WiFi are heterogeneous in various aspects, it is necessary to find a way to interconnect the two networks. The traditional approach is to design dedicated hardware. Since the physical layer functions and part of MAC layer functions in the hardware are fixed, this method cannot adapt to the new physical layer and signal processing algorithms. Software Defined Radio (SDR) is an emerging and flexible method of transferring signal processing components from dedicated hardware to a combination of software and general purpose processors. In this paper, we use SDR in conjunction with the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to build a flexible and universal ZigBee-WiFi gateway for interconnecting heterogeneous ZigBee and WiFi networks. The gateway has the ability to simultaneously receive and demodulate ZigBee packets, create and transmit WiFi data frames. A comprehensive performance test confirmed that the built gateway can well interconnect heterogeneous ZigBee and WiFi networks. And the built gateway provides a reference prototype for the interconnection research of heterogeneous networks.

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