A semiconductor manufacturing company.

The scope of the project involves design and development of a full ZigBee compliant protocol stack including Network Layer, Application Support Sub-layer, ZigBee Device Objects (ZDO), ZigBee Application Framework (AF) and Platform Specific components. The platform components should provide platform dependent system blocks including the operating system, power, memory and timer management, and boot loader. Apart from the ZigBee stack, the deliverables should include a suite of tools to assist customers to develop applications on top of the stack. The tools suite should consist of PC based applications to support testing and debugging, and PC based applications to configure applications and generate ZigBee profile based applications.

Mindteck was fully responsible for implementing the ZigBee Alliance specifications and delivering ZigBee standard compliant stack. The protocol stack must be portable with little effort across customer’s other processor platforms for implementing wireless solutions.

The Solution

The ZigBee competence center based at Mindteck’s global development center in Bangalore is involved in the design and development of the protocol stack, suite of tools and demo applications.

The ZigBee solution suite includes:

	Stack components – Network Layer, Application Support Sub-layer, Application Framework, ZigBee Device Objects, ZigBee Device Profile, and Security Service Provider (SSP)
	Platform Management Components – Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), Power Management (PM), Boot Loader, Reset Management, Test Application wrapper and UART driver
	Test applications – Applications that perform functional, multi vendor inter-operable, ZigBee complaint test suites.

The blocks communicate through either Service Access Points (SAP) or Application Program Interfaces (API). The features provided by the SAPs internally in the ZigBee stack are as per the standards defined by the ZigBee Alliance. The code size and memory consumption are crucial to the success of the ZigBee stack. Mindteck development team ensured the code size and memory consumption met the requirements proposed by the customer.

The development tools, test tools, packet analyzer, application builder are in accordance with customer defined standards. The ZigBee stack is developed in ANSI C with limited usage of assembly. The ZigBee stack is designed to be configured as a coordinator, router or end device at the software compile time. The stack supports customizations of various configurable parameters both at compile and run time. It also has built-in error recovery and safe-state restore mechanisms.

The ZigBee competence center at Mindteck is responsible for handling all ZigBee specification issues. These include monitoring and participating in ZigBee Working Group discussions, and ensuring the solution is in accordance with the newer updates provided by the ZigBee Alliance. The documentation deliverables include reference manuals for developers to understand SAP, API and design rules; design manuals providing details of the architecture and functionality of the components; and user manuals for software tools.

Apart from cost arbitrage, the customer benefited from:

	Mindteck’s experience in building MAC, ZigBee stack and applications for both multi-vendor and single vendor platform solutions
	Mindteck’s offshore development center in Bangalore providing high quality talent at lower costs, maximizing value for the customer
	ZigBee Competence Center at Mindteck providing updates of ZigBee specifications to the development team
	Optimum code size and memory consumptions
	ZigBee protocol stack portable with little effort across the customer’s
	other processor platforms for implementing wireless solutions