Gateway Architecture for Ubiquitous Access to ZigBee-Based Sensor Networks

Abstract

This paper investigates protocol architecture of a Web-ZigBee gateway for interconnecting TCP/IP-based networks and ZigBee/IEEE802.15.4-based wireless sensor networks. The Web-ZigBee gateway delivers data between the TCP/IP network and the ZigBee network. Since those two networks have different communication protocols, a protocol translation mechanism is needed. Herein, we propose a method to deliver query messages from the Internet to the sensor network and receive data from sensors. The protocol translation is performed in the translation layer that is placed above the two application layers, i.e., the Internet application layer and ZigBee application layer. Among various interfaces, we use CGI programming to take care of translation functions efficiently. The CGI manages query information from a client on the Internet and data from the ZigBee sensor network. Whereas the TCP/IP enabled sensor network overlays two heterogeneous communication protocols, overlaying layers increase the complexity and cost of implementing the sensor network. On the contrary, the sensors in our gateway-based system are not only light (because each communication protocol works independently without overlaying), but also efficient because the translation layer mostly alleviates header overloading.