Z-Wave Technology Boise ID

As home control manufacturers attempt to go more mainstream, wireless networking technology is seen as a natural way around the problems of legacy homesthose that didnt have the requisite wiring that was, until now, required to command myriad distributed devices.

Z-Wave, a radio-frequency (RF)-based technology, is one of the contenders hoping to capture this nascent market. Z-Wave technology is the product of Zensys, a Danish company that has now moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley. Zensys is not attempting to become a home control company itself. Rather, it has developed the underlying wireless technology and is supplying the integrated circuit (IC) chips and related software to a rapidly growing list of companies marketing Z-Wave-enabled devices to end customers.

To help guide development of the Z-Wave technology and promote Z-Wave in the market, Zensys and five of its key customersIntermatic, Leviton, Universal Electronics (UEI), and Wayne Daltonformed the Z-Wave Alliance in January 2005. Almost a year and a half later, Intel and Monster joined the alliance as principal members. The alliance currently numbers more than 125 member companies.

Zensys also has benefited from investments made by a couple of the technology worlds giants, including Cisco Systems and Intel Capital. Though the sizes of these capital infusions were not disclosed, they should prove useful in helping Zensys develop its technology and get a foothold in the home automation market. In this quest, Z-Wave will have to battle other solutions already on the scene, including existing proprietary RF solutions, ZigBee, the well-known X10, and the recently debuted Insteon, which works over existing electrical wiring and comes with an RF bridging option. All of these solutions, categorized as no-new-wire technologies, essentially re-purpose an electrical distribution network to work as a low-data-rate signaling network as well.

Zensys CEO Tony Shakib, who sees the home automation market as a wide open green field, said that one key advantage for Z-Waves entry into the club is its pitch to specific applicationsfor example, lighting control or sprinkler managementrather than to home control. Home automation is a label that scares people away, Shakib said. You think that it is for the future; [but] not really for right now.

Shakib highlighted a series of points (robustness, interoperability, affordability, and a variety of products to flow into different channels) that he said are keys to home automations success in the mass market. He believes that Z-Wave has them all. We wouldnt have picked up Logitech as a customer, or Monster, or companies like that [if the technology wasnt solid], he explained, because they test it to death.

Z-Waves reliability lies in its mesh networking capability. In a mesh network, each device will forward along any packets it receives that are addressed to a different device. This helps get around the problem of uneven RF coverage. If one device ...

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