It will change the IoT Smarthome battle field

Google,Amazon, Apple jointly endorsed IoT standard for Home Area Network (HAN) Smart Home

Google announced few days before the end of 2019 that together with Amazon and Apple (the big 3 smart home players) they endorsed one joint wireless IoT standard for smart home. (https://blog.google/products/google-nest/developing-standard-smart-home-industry/)

We’re joining Amazon, Apple and others to create Connected Home over IP, a new independent working group managed by the Zigbee Alliance (separate from the existing Zigbee 3.0/Pro protocol). We’re contributing two of our market-tested and open-source smart home technologies, Weave and Thread. Both are built on IP and have been integrated into millions of homes around the world.

We all know in the past years there is a battle for the short range, low power protocol for smart home IoT applications between ZigBee and Thread. ZigBee started from 2005 and has millions millions of device on the market. Thread is coming from Google Nest Labs since 2015.

This announcement is interesting in the sense:

1. Thread/Weave was a Google/Nest play but now join forced with the other two: Amazon and Apple
2. The new standard will be managed under Zigbee. So world peace!
3. What are they really doing? forming a joint working group called: connected home over IP project (CHIP link: https://www.connectedhomeip.com/)

You could tell from the web page that the CHIP alliance seems in a hurry to announce it’s formation. (maybe to catch the CES in Jan). They did briefly talked about their objective of this initiative.

The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers. The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.

Now let’s take a look of some technical details of ZigBee and Thread implementations.

ZigBee (3.0/pro)and Thread are both open standard build on the same physical and link layer protocol stacks — IEEE 802.15.4 whereas their biggest competition in this space Z-Wave is using a proprietary Z-Wave standard.

Zigbee and Thread Protocol Stack Layers[2]

The shared physical/Mac layer gives a big advantage to utilize the same HW/chip solutions and that pave the foundation for this cooperation opportunities.

The key difference between the Zigbee(3.0/pro) vs Thread are listed as below:[2]

1. Thread leverages Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which enables a natural connection between Thread networks and existing IPv6-based networks like Wi-Fi, Ethernet or cellular standard such as 4G/5G. Zigbee was built from the ground up, and each node in the network gets a 16-bit address that must be translated into IP using an application layer gateway
2. Thread does not define specific application layers, while Zigbee defines all layers in the OSI model. This makes Thread a more flexible choice in terms of application layer selection. On the other hand, since Zigbee specifies application layer, a greater interoperability on application layer is guaranteed.
3. Thread authentication and commissioning is smartphone-based, while with Zigbee, authentication is centralized through a trust center with proximity-based commissioning.

ZIgBee vs Thread [2]

What is the role of Weave here?

Weave is framework used by Nest to enable its thermostats, smoke detectors and cameras to communicate with each other directly, without having to go through the home network or the cloud.

Weave, an application protocol, works over many networks like Thread, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and even cellular. Even when devices are on different networks, Weave allows them all to securely work with each other.We can add Weave functionality with OpenWeave, the open-source version of Weave.

The core of the weave has 4 layers

Image from (https://openweave.io/guides/profiles)

The Fabric state layer uses the underlying transports of TCP, UDP, and BLE to pass the messages. TCP and UDP use both IPv4 and IPv6 over technologies such as Thread and WiFi, while BLE is treated as point-to-point links without routability.

A Weave fabric is a network that comprises all Home Area Network(HAN) nodes, the Nest Service, and any mobile devices participating in the HAN. It sits on top of the HAN and enables easier routing across the different underlying network link technologies (for example, Thread or Wi-Fi). The above topology is an example of a simple Home Area Network (HAN). In this HAN, two nodes on the left side are connected together in a Thread network, and one of those nodes connects to a third via Wi-Fi. This node can also be connected to a wireless router in the home to provide internet connectivity for the entire HAN.

The Smart Home IoT battel field was divided by ZigBee, Z-wave, Thread, BLE and other proprietary standard. With the market size of Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Apple Homekit, this new development will change the game plan and help the technological development to make a more robust, secure HAN (will talk about the HAN security in a separate post — image we have to replace our home keys with a password given smart-locks take place — how good are we manage our password?)

Reference:

1. David Williams, “A Battle of IoT Protocols: ZigBee vs Thread” https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
2. Roberto Sandre, “Thread and Zigbee for home and building automation” http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/sway012/sway012.pdf
3. Kevin Parrish, “ZigBee, Z-Wave, Thread and WeMo: What’s the Difference?” https://www.tomsguide.com/us/smart-home-wireless-network-primer,news-21085.html