This paper surveys routing protocols in Zigbee-based networks, which are developed on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for low-power, low-data-rate applications. It details various network topologies, including star, cluster tree, and mesh, and discusses multiple routing protocols such as AODV, AODVJR, and hierarchical routing methods aimed at optimizing network performance. The study concludes with insights into the effectiveness and improvements of these routing protocols for enhancing Zigbee networks.

1. Int. Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engg. Vol. 2, Spl. Issue 1 (2015) e-ISSN: 1694-2310 | p-ISSN: 1694-2426
43 NITTTR, Chandigarh EDIT-2015
Routing Protocols in Zigbee Based networks:
A Survey
1
Harmanpreet Kaur, 2
Amol P Bhondekar
1
M.E. Scholar, NITTTR Chandigarh, 2
Principal Scientist, CSIR-CSIO Chandigarh.
harmanpreetz14@gmail.com
Abstract: ZigBee is the new standard developed wireless
personal area network (WPAN) based on IEEE 802.15.4 for
low cost, low data rate and low power consumption wireless
network. In present times, zigbee has become a hot topic for
research and development all over the world. This paper
briefly describes various ZigBee network topologies
including star, cluster tree and mesh topology and further
introduces different ZigBee routing protocols such as AODV,
AODVjr, Hierarchical, Integrated and Enhanced hierarchical
routing protocol (EHRP).
Keywords: Zigbee, Routing protocols, Networks, topologies.
I. INTRODUCTION
In December 2000, an IEEE 802 WPAN (Wireless
Personal Area Network) group was founded to define the
wireless protocol for WPAN. A new protocol IEEE
802.15.4 was released in December 2003 for low power
and low cost wireless networking for domestic and
industrial environments. Further the ZigBee Alliance
released its first specification in December 2004, based
upon the physical (PHY) and medium access control
(MAC) layer of IEEE 802.15.4 protocol [1].
ZigBee defines three types of devices: ZigBee coordinator,
ZigBee router and ZigBee end device. The ZigBee
specification defines network layer, application layer and
correlative security strategies, based upon the physical
(PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer of IEEE
802.15.4 protocol. The definition of ZigBee network layer
includes network topology, network establishment,
network maintenance, routing and its maintenance [2].
Typical applications of IEEE 802.15.4 devices are: i)
industrial control, ii) environmental and structural health
monitoring; iii) home automation, entertainment and toys;
iv) security, location and asset tracking; v) emergency and
disaster response.
In this paper, Part II explains various network topologies in
Zigbee network. Part III analyses various routing protocols
at the network layer developed to optimize network
performance in terms of various parameters such as energy
efficiency, delay, security, etc. Finally conclusions are
drawn in the last part.
II. ZIGBEE NETWORK TOPOLOGIES
In the star topology, the communication is established
between devices and a single central controller, called the
PAN coordinator. The PAN coordinator may be mains
powered while the devices will most likely be battery
powered. The star topology is not preferred in
sophisticated wireless sensor networks. The star topology
of ZigBee is mainly designed for the simple
communication from one node to several nodes.
The mesh topology has a PAN coordinator. Any device
can communicate with any other device as long as they are
in range of one another. A mesh network can be ad hoc,
self-organizing and self-healing. Applications such as
industrial control and monitoring, wireless sensor
networks, asset and inventory tracking use this topology. It
also allows multiple hops to route messages from one
device to other in the network. It can provide reliability by
multipath routing.
Figure 4: Zigbee Network topologies[11]
In tree topology, coordinators still initiate and maintain the
network. But routers are used to enlarge the network.
Routers control the flow of data by using hierarchical
routing strategies in the network. They also may imply
beacon enabled network defined in IEEE 802.15.4 for
periodical data transmission. It is a special case of mesh
network in which most devices are FFDs (Full Function
Device) and an RFD (Reduced Function Device) may
connect to a cluster-tree network as a leave node at the end
of a branch [1,3].
III. ZIGBEE ROUTING PROTOCOLS
Various Routing algorithms can be
implemented on the Zigbee network layer like AODV,
AODVjr, Cluster tree, EHRP, multipath and so on which
will be discussed in detail in this part.
The AODV (Ad-Hoc On demand Distance Vector) routing
is a pure on-demand route acquisition algorithm. The node
which needs the connection broadcasts a route request
RREQ to its neighbors who re-route the message and
safeguard the node from which they received the message.
Along with its own sequence number and the Route
Request ID, the source node includes in the RREQ the
most recent sequence number it has for the destination.
The path cost comparison of packets with the same RREQ
allows choosing best path at the moment and discarding
anything worse. When a node receives a message and it
has an entry corresponding to the destination in its routing
table, it returns a RREP through the reverse path to the
requesting node. So, the source sends its data through this
path to the destination with the minimum number of hops
[4, 5].

2. Int. Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engg. Vol. 2, Spl. Issue 1 (2015) e-ISSN: 1694-2310 | p-ISSN: 1694-2426
NITTTR, Chandigarh EDIT -2015 44
In the ZFA protocol, if one node has no route to one
destination node, it broadcasts the data of transport layer
through the way of flooding. The ZFA protocol combines
routing discovery with data transmission. The destination
node sends the packet of route layer along the reverse
direction after receiving packet, and then the routing is
established [6].
AODVjr removes form the AODV specification the
sequence numbers, gratuitous RREP, hop count, Hello
message, RREP, precursor lists. In AODVjr, if
communications are unidirectional, the destination sends
Connect messages to the source. If data traffic is
bidirectional, no additional messages are used. In any case,
a source detects a link break in a route when it receives no
messages from the destination [1].
An AODVjr routing protocol with multiple feedback
policy [7] by means of processing main message during
route discovery. The source node starts the route
discovery, the destination node processes every Route
Request (RREQ) and sends every Route Reply (RREP) as
feedback information to the source node, and the source
node processes multiple RREP messages for routing
decision. The improved AODVjr changes the routing
decision commander from destination to source and make
a proactive routing decision on the basis of multiple
feedback information.
In ZBR (Zigbee Routing) or Hierarchical Routing Protocol
(HERA), during the establishment of the network, the
ZigBee coordinator determines maximum number of
children routers a parent may have as children. In addition,
each node has a "depth" which is the minimum number of
hops to reach the coordinator using only parent-child link.
For constructing the path, the source node checks if the
recipient is one of its descendants because it knows the
network address in the block of its child node. Otherwise,
the source and the parent node send the data to its parent.
The downlink of information is provided through a
technique for determining the successor based on the
ZigBee router address, depth and address of the node [4].
In the integrated routing [8], a node falls into one of the
following two classes: routing node plus (RN+), which has
enough memory to perform AODVjr routing; routing node
minus (RN-), which has limited memory and only
performs cluster-tree routing. While an RN node always
follows the cluster-tree, an RN+ node can either follow the
cluster-tree or dynamically discover an AODV route,
depending on various factors such as session duration and
tolerable route discovery delay.
In ZiCL (Zigbee Cluster Label) [4], the ZigBee network is
divided into one or more logical clusters and then a unique
Cluster Label is assigned to each cluster where the Cluster
Label represents addresses of all nodes in a logical cluster.
Within each cluster, nodes can communicate with each
other in at most four hops. Every node is associated with a
Cluster Label and cluster heads are connected with each
other via gateway nodes, which are used to communicate
with an adjacent cluster. According to one hop neighbor
information, nodes which are connected with other clusters
can identify own role as a gateway.
In the shortcut tree routing[9], remaining hops from an
arbitrary source to the destination are calculated using the
hierarchical addressing scheme in ZigBee, and each source
or intermediate node forwards a packet to the neighbor
node with the smallest remaining hops in its neighbor
table.
ZigBee Multipath Hierarchical Tree Routing (Z-MHTR) is
a multipath extension of the ZBR and the built paths are
node disjoint, used simultaneously to route data. Data
packets are routed to the sink (tree root) on up to three
disjoint paths. These routing decisions are performed on-
the-fly thanks to the ZigBee tree topology properties
without requiring the traditional discovery phase using
RREQs [10].
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, after a literature survey on the Zigbee
technology, an in-depth knowledge about the topologies
and routing mechanism was acquired. The paper presented
different routing protocols developed so far to improve
performance of Zigbee networks.
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