After the interview, I've included some links to some of the most popular ZigBee articles on the site.

RFDL: What is the status of the technology?
Sharma: ZigBee has matured into a robust and reliable standard and has become the wireless technology of choice for the utilities in implementing smart metering for demand response and energy management as well as in home automation, monitoring and security. ZigBee shipments in the past two years have been in the millions, in applications including in-home displays, light, climate and media controls, smart meters and home security to name a few. The ZigBee Alliance now boasts a membership in excess of 300 companies from around the world.

Miller: ZigBee is a wireless mesh networking standard focused on low power and low cost, and is targeted at home automation, smart power, and similar markets not well served by Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. ZigBee is not yet widely deployed, but with worldwide energy concern on the rise, ZigBee's position in the emerging smart power market may propel it into the spotlight.

Sambuis: ZigBee technology is now mature with major design-ins achieved in 2008 in the metering domain (smart energy profile). Earlier this year, the ZigBee Alliance announced 19 products compliant to the smart energy (SE) profile. A new wave of designs is happening in the home automation domain, especially with lighting and security applications. Other profiles are currently being developed (mainly commercial building automation).

RFDL: How do you see market opportunities?
Sambuis: - Short-term -- Smart Energy remains the main driver for the ZigBee market, with lighting ensuring the second wave of applications. From a revenue standpoint, the volume of metering applications should remain limited to field trials in 2009 with a larger production ramp in 2010. Longer term : Zigbee will likely need to evolve to battery-less solutions in order to address energy harvesting applications, which will become more and more critical in the future.

Miller: ZigBee has great market opportunities, but only if the promise of extreme low cost and low power can be realized. For the target devices, battery lifespans are measured in years and the market won't bear more than $1 or $2 per unit for the ZigBee controller and radio. A company can be successful in this market only by aggressively cutting costs in every area of design, engineering, and production.

Sharma:The market opportunities are enormous especially in the AMI/AMR and smart grid initiatives underway around the world coupled with the need for home area network devices. This convergence between smart grid and home automation will not only spawn many short and medium term opportunities but also enable more applications in the long term that capitalize on this infrastructure being created.

RFDL: What do you wish every RF engineer knew about this topic?
Miller: Buying lower cost EDA tools can be a great way to keep costs down on low-margin, medium-volume products like ZigBee radios. High end tools have their place, but the cost of these tools has to be made up for by higher product prices, and that can mean the difference between success and failure in markets where pennies count.

Sharma:Every RF engineer should know that ZigBee is a mature technology that has become the leading low power wireless standard for a variety of cool applications. It is a true global wireless standard for monitoring and control with multiple certified silicon and software platforms as well as some high quality tools that are making it easier to develop these applications.

Sambuis: - That TI provides everything, from hardware to software, application notes, reference designs, community engineer-to-engineer interaction, etc. to support RF engineers in all phases of product definition and development. Further, TI's Low Power RF 3rd Party network is also critical, as designing a mesh network can be fairly challenging and often requires the help of external partners (interoperability testing, compliance to regional regulations, etc).

Links to hot ZigBee articles on the RF DesignLine:

• ZigBee and ZigBee PRO: Which feature set is right for you?
• Exceeding the standard for wireless sensor networks
• ZigBee goes green with support for smart energy
• Making sense of low-power wireless network standards
• Toward a structured approach to wireless sensor network design
• Signal Chain Basics (Part 24): Basic networking using the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY/MAC protocol