ECE/CS 5566 - Assignment # 2 Apoorv Naik (apoorv@vt.

edu)

Bluetooth vs. ZigBee

Following Table illustrates Key differences between Bluetooth and ZigBee.

Property Bluetooth ZigBee Remarks

Origin Date 1994 1998
Underlying Standard 802.15.1 802.15.4 IEEE standards
Completely Different
Monitoring and Control, Application Focus
Application Focus Cable Replacement
Sensor Networks although some areas do
overlap
ZigBee trades range for
Communication Range 10 - 100 m 10 - 75 m
power
Directly related to
Battery Life Few Days- Month Months - Year
Power consumption
2.4 GHz( Global)
902 to 928 MHz Both operates in free
Radio Spectrum 2.4GHz
(Americas) unlicensed ISM band.
868 MHz ( Europe)
Up to 1 Mb/s Blueooth offers
(721 Kb/s without 250 Kb/s (2.4 GHz) significant data rates as
Data Rate protocol overhead), 40 Kb/s (915 MHz) compared to ZiBee as
2Mb/s, 3Mb/s 20 Kb/s (868 MHz) the cost of power
(Class 3 Devices) consumption
FHSS vs DSSS
Receiver Sesitivity -70 dBm -92 dBm techniques, explained
below
Based on receiver
(-25) - 0 dBm (upto sensitivity and
Nominal TX Power 0-10 dBm (10mW)
30mW) operating range
requirements
Number of Radio 1(868 MHz), 10(928
79
Channels MHz), 16 (2.4 GHz)
Link Bandwidth 1 MHz 20 - 250 KHz Explained below
Latency Higher Lower

Timing Considerations
Difference in Channel
New node Enumeration 3s 30 ms
Access Techniques and
protocol complexity.
Sleeping node changing 3 s typically 15 ms typically
Explained below.
to Active

Active node channel 2 ms typically 15 ms typically

access time
BPSK ( 868 MHz and ZigBee used more
Digital Modulation GFSK
915 MHz Band) efficient modulation
 O-QPSK ( 2.4 GHz Band) scheme to increase
power efficiency
To achieve higher range
Frequency Hopping Direct Sequence Spread
Spreading Type for same power DSSS is
Spread Spectrum (FHSS) Spectrum (DSSS)
better. Explained below
Co-existence Adaptive Frequency Dynamic Frequency
Explained below
Mechanism hopping Selection
More operating power
Interference High Low
of Bluetooth and FHSS.
EO Stream Cipher
(Encryption) AES Block cipher Both provide 3 level of
Security
Shared secret (CTR, counter mode) security.
(Authentication)
More number of
Primitives and Events in
Protocol Complexity Very High Low
Bluetooth protocol as
compared to ZigBee
Protocol Stack Size 250 KB 28 KB Bluetooth protocol
Data Payload 309 bytes 102 bytes
Data Coding Efficiency Higher Lower Explained below
Network Size (Number Up to 8 in Piconet.
of Devices supported at Scatternets can contain Up to 65,535 Explained below
a time) Multiple Piconets
Topology Star Star, Peer to Peer, Mesh
RFD nodes are less
Node Configurations Master/Slave FFD/RFD complex helps ZigBee
saves a lot of power.
Supported in ZigBee
Multi hop No Yes
using AODV
Error Correction 8 bit , 16 bit 16 bit CRC
Bluetooth:
communication
Communication Type Synchronous Asynchronous synchronized by Master.
ZigBee: Can operate in
asynchronous mode
ZigBee: Multi Hop
Service Area Small Large capable and Network
size is larger
Network size of ZigBee
Scalability Low/No Very High is very large as
compared to Bluetooth
Depends on Protocol
Unit Price About 3 - 5 $ About 1 -3 $
Complexity
Bluetooth: Provides high
Media Support Voice/Data Data only rate required for Voice
communication
Reasons for some prominent differences between

• Power Consumption : ZigBee’s power consumption is lower than that of Bluetooth because of
following reasons.

The data rate of ZigBee ( up to 250 Kb/s ) is much smaller as compared to Bluetooth.

The Frame overhead is reduced.

Reduced Complexity (Protocol Stack Sizes exemplifies this).

Implementation of Strict power Management Mechanisms like (Power down and Sleep
modes, Beaconed networking etc.).

Power Consumption is even lowered for ZigBee operating in 868/915 MHz spectrum as
lower transmission power is required to achieve same SNR at lower frequency for same
transmission Range.

Many of the nodes in ZigBee network are configured as RFD ( Reduced Function devices)
which simplifies the implementation and precludes these devices from forwarding
messages, allowing them to save power on them by going to sleep mode when they do
not have any data to send. On the other hand, Communication is Bluetooth consumes
much more power as nodes are in always ON state waiting for their time slots ( unless
they are in Parked state).

Digital modulation schemes used in ZigBee are very simple like BPSK, which do not
require a higher SNR to achieve the same Bit Error rate as opposed to schemes like 64-
QAM etc but simple schemes are inefficient in terms of mapping number of data bits to
transmitted symbol thus a very high data rate cannot be achieved but it leads to
significant improvements in Power performance. On the other hand Bluetooth uses
GFSK modulation which is relatively less efficient as compared to BPSK, thus consumes
more power.

ZigBee uses DSSS technique which has a better receiver sensitivity (about 12 dB) while
Bluetooth uses FHSS which has has receiver sensitivity of about 18dB, Thus less power is
required in ZigBee as compared to Bluetooth to obtain same range.

• Communication Range: FHSS systems operated with SNR of about 18dB while DSSS systems,
because of more efficient modulation techniques like BPSK, can operate at much lower SNR of
about 18dB. Thus, a much more range can be obtained with DSSS systems compared to FHSS
system for the same power input. Thus ZigBee’s can have better range than Bluetooth for same
power input

• Data Rate and Link Bandwidth: According to Channel Capacity is given by Shannon’s Theorem

C = B log (1 + SNR)

Thus more is the Signal Power more will be the received power and hence more is the channel
capacity. Thus In case of Bluetooth where we have much higher TX power available as compared
to ZigBee, we get better channel capacity and hence the better Data Rate for Bluetooth.
• Battery Life: Since ZigBee’s power consumption is lower than that of Bluetooth as mentioned in
above point, the life of ZigBee devices is much more than that of Bluetooth device for same
power source.

• Complexity: The Protocol Complexity can be measured in terms of number of primitives

(Protocol and Service Messages) and events. The Bluetooth Primitive include Client service
access points (SAP), HCI SAP, synchronous connection- oriented (SCO) SAP, and logical link
control and adaptation protocol ( L2CAP) and events include Host controller Interface (HCI)
events. While the Primitives and events for ZigBee’s are far less as compared to Bluetooth. Thus
Bluetooth is much complex protocol as compared to ZigBee.

• Co-Existence Mechanism: Since Bluetooth and ZigBee both operates in 2.4 GHz unlicensed
spectrum, some mechanism must be employed for Co-Existence/Interference avoidance along
with other standards for which Bluetooth uses Adaptive Frequency Hopping (underlying
technique - FHSS). Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH) improves resistance to radio frequency
interference by avoiding using crowded frequencies in the hopping sequence. This sort of
adaptive transmission is easier to implement with FHSS so for Bluetooth which uses FHSS we use
AFH.

• Data Coding Efficiency : It is defined as the Ratio of data size and Message size and can be
calculated using the following formulae
PCodEF = Ndata / (Ndata + ( Ndata / NmaxPld x Novhd)).
By using the value of Payload Size and Total Message size(frame size) in above formulae for both
Bluetooth and ZigBee, we can see that Data coding efficiency of Bluetooth is greater than that of
ZigBee.

• Timing Considerations and Latency: In case of ZigBee, medium access technique used is CSMA/
CA while for Bluetooth FH-FDD-TDMA is used where the time slots are allocated by Master
node. So when a new node tries to join a network in Bluetooth, Master node has to reallocate
the time slots for all the nodes in the network which take much more processing time as
compared to ZigBee which uses CSMA/CA. Another reason is that the complexcity of Bluetooth
protocol is much more than that of a ZigBee protocol. So the Network joining time of ZigBee
node is of the order of milliseconds which is very less as compared to Bluetooth (about 3 s). Also
Channel Access time and Sleep to wakeup time for ZigBee is also small as compared to
Bluetooth. Thus overall Network Latency of ZigBee devices is lower as compared to Bluetooth.

• Network Size: Bluetooth’s mode of operation is based on TDM where a slot is allocated for each
slave to communicate with the Master. Under this scheme, a very large number of users cannot
be supported as there is a practical limit on number of slots. While ZigBee operated in a LAN like
fashion using CSMA/CA, thus a far more number of nodes can be supported in the Network/
• Service Area and Scalability: Since ZigBee nodes can be connected in multi hop configurations
and the size of ZigBee network is also large as compared to Bluetooth which can only support
only 8 nodes at time, the Area serviced by ZigBee is much more as compared to Bluetooth. Also,
for this reason, ZigBee networks are much more scalable than Bluetooth.

• Cost: Due to the inherent complexity in Bluetooth architecture, the development and
deployment cost of a Bluetooth device/Network is more than that of a ZigBee device.

• Media Support: Due to low data rate of ZigBee, as of now it only supports Data packets and no
voice communication is supported by ZigBee. However, Bluetooth operated in two modes, SOC
and ALC, and there is dedicated channel in SOC mode which is guaranteed to get a time every
cycle thereby making real time communications such as Voice communications possible using
Bluetooth.

• Application Focus: Bluetooth and ZigBee are basically targeted for different classes of
Applications. Bluetooth’s main focus is Cable replacement in systems like personal computer,
hands free in mobile etc. while ZigBee focused more towards automation and control
applications like wireless switches, sensor network applications etc. Thus , they may be
competing technologies for some applications, broadly they have very different application
domain.