(September 2006)
Z-Wave™ is a wireless RF-based communications technology designed for residential and light commercial control and status reading applications such as meter reading, lighting and appliance control, HVAC, access control, intruder and fire detection, etc. Z-Wave transforms any stand-alone device into an intelligent networked device that can be controlled and monitored wirelessly.

Z-Wave delivers high quality networking at a fraction of the cost of other similar technologies by focusing on narrow bandwidth applications and substituting costly hardware with innovative software solutions.

The Z-Wave technology is available in the Z-Wave Single Chip solutions. The Z-Wave protocol stack is embedded in the chips, and Flash memory is available to the manufacturer/OEM for their application software. For smooth product development, a range of manufacturing blueprints of the PCB circuitry surrounding the Z-Wave Single Chip is offered – including antenna circuitry and filters.

Main features:
Low Cost For Mass Market, Z-Wave operates with a bandwidth of just 9.6 kbps. Innovative protocol handling techniques replace costly HW implementations to deliver the right price points.

Highly Robust And Reliable, Z-Wave minimizes noise and distortion problems by using transmission mechanisms such as 2-way acknowledgement, condensed frame formats and random back-off algorithms, ensuring highly reliable communication between all the devices in the network.

Full Home Signal Coverage. Z-Wave’s dynamic routing principle, integrated into the technology, secures a virtually unlimited signal range, as each of the Z-Wave devices repeats the signal from one device to the next.

Easy Network Management Z-Wave is designed to enable automatic network address assignment at installation, simple inclusion/exclusion of nodes, and simple association/disassociation of nodes to one another. Each Z-Wave network has its own unique Network Identifier preventing control problems or interference from neighbouring networks.

Low Power Consumption Unlike most control systems, Z-Wave’s lightweight protocol implementation and compressed frames helps keep power consumption low.

Versatility Z-Wave is a scalable protocol that was developed with the versatility to include additional features and applications as well as to connect to other protocols.

Any further questions please contact Stefan Froböse via mail sfroboese@mev-elektronik.com.