Category: Positive Technology

Outdoor and Indoor Location of Sensor Devices using GSM Cells and GPS

There are two main ways of performing outdoor location when tracking sensor devices in a large area such as a city.

Triple Security in ZigBee: Link, Network and Application layer Encryptions

ZigBee sets three layers of security, the first one is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 Link layer encryption. The others are implemented in the <strong>Networking</strong> and <strong>Application</strong> layers. All of them uses AES 128b as encryption mechanism but differ from the kind of authentication and privacy policies.

12Km ZigBee link with Waspmote

During the research of the Waspmote platform, tests were conducted using different transceivers across various frequency bands (2.4GHz, 868MHz, and 900MHz) and transmission power levels. Field trials in the Monegros Desert (Spain) aimed to evaluate the performance and range limits of the integrated 802.15.4/ZigBee radios.

Security in 802.15.4 and ZigBee networks

<p>As pointed in the previous article <em><strong>802.15.4 vs Zigbee</strong></em>, the IEEE MAC layer implements several features which are used by the Zigbee protocol in the network and application layers. One of this features is the security services. <br /><strong>IEEE 802.15.4</strong> sets the encryption algorithm to use when cyphering the data to transmit, however,  the standard does not specify <strong>how</strong> the keys have to be managed or what kind of <strong>authentication policies</strong> have to be applied. These issues are treated in the upper layers which are managed by technologies such as <strong>ZigBee</strong>.</p>