ZigBee Alliance and TTC, Japan Sign MoU to Adopt ZigBee IP Specification as a TTC Standard

SAN RAMON, Calif., May 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The ZigBee® Alliance, a global ecosystem of companies creating wireless solutions for use in energy management, commercial and consumer applications, and Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC), a non-profit and private standards development organization on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Japan, today announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two standards development organizations to work together towards inclusion of ZigBee IP as a TTC standard.

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The MoU was signed recently in Tokyo by Yoichi Maeda, CEO of TTC and Dr. Bob Heile, Chairman Emeritus and Chief Technologist of the ZigBee Alliance.

ZigBee is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard.  TTC develops and publishes "TTC Standards" describing the technical specifications on various aspects of ICTs. Under this MoU, ZigBee and TTC agree to work together on the adoption of the ZigBee Internet Protocol Standard (ZigBee IP) as a standard in TTC.

The ZigBee IP specification is the first open standard for an IPv6 based full wireless mesh networking solution to control low power, low cost devices. ZigBee IP enriches the IEEE 802.15.4 standard by adding network and security layers and an application framework. ZigBee IP offers a scalable architecture with end-to-end IPv6 networking, laying the foundation for an Internet of Things without the need for intermediate gateways. It offers cost-effective and energy-efficient wireless mesh network based on standard Internet protocols, such as 6LoWPAN, IPv6, PANA, RPL, TCP, TLS and UDP. It also features proven, end-to-end security using TLS1.2 protocol, link layer frame security based on AES-128-CCM algorithm and support for public key infrastructure using standard X.509 v3 certificates and ECC-256 cipher suite.

As a result of the MoU, the first TTC standard based on this agreement - JJ-300.10, "Home Network Communication Interface for ECHONET Lite (IEEE802.15.4/4e/[email protected] Wireless)" was published.

"ZigBee is already the leading global open standard for M2M communications," said Yoichi Maeda, CEO of TTC. "ZigBee IP expands the realm of IP based monitoring and control that is essential for the emerging needs of energy management systems and corresponding services at home, office, and industry. Its inclusion as a TTC standard will accelerate the home network and public utilities market in Japan. The global interoperability as a whole system is very important in this area, and TTC's aim is de-jure standardization of such systems for future work, with the cooperation of ZigBee Alliance and other partners."

ZigBee IP continues the ZigBee tradition of self-organizing and self-healing mesh networking standards to enable robust communications over the globally available 2.4 GHz frequency as well as other frequencies such as 920 MHz in Japan. 

"As one of the largest and technologically most advanced economies of the world, Japan will play an important role in the realization of the vision of IoT," said Tobin Richardson, Chairman and CEO of the ZigBee Alliance. "TTC is a key developer and promoter of communications standards in Japan and having ZigBee IP become a TTC standard will widen ZigBee adoption and propel the IoT space in Japan."

About TTC
TTC is a non-profit and private standards development organizations (SDOs) on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Japan which develops and publishes "TTC Standards" describing the technical specifications on various aspects of ICTs applicable not only in Japan but also in many areas of the world. TTC is an SDO qualified by ITU-T Recommendation A.5 so that ITU-T Recommendations can include references to TTC Standards and is also qualified under ITU-T Recommendation A.6 as an organization for cooperation and exchange of information in the sense that ITU-T and its Study Groups can make use of TTC standards for their studies.

ZigBee: Control your world
ZigBee offers green and global wireless standards connecting the widest range of devices to work together intelligently and help you control your world. The ZigBee Alliance is an open, non- profit association of approximately 400 members driving development of innovative, reliable and easy-to-use ZigBee standards. The Alliance promotes worldwide adoption of ZigBee as the leading wirelessly networked, sensing and control standard for use in consumer, commercial and industrial areas. For more information, visit: www.ZigBee.org.

SOURCE ZigBee Alliance