zigbee hardware in mobile phone
Is it required for a mobile phone to have a dedicated Zigbee chip in order to be a Zigbee node (coordinator/router/endnode) ?
If yes, then, I guess there should be a driver module for it as well ?
I don't know about the exact HW structure of mobile phones; in laptop we have a wlan card with its own antenna and driver; how about mobile phone ? there are separate wifi, gps and bluetooth chips with separate driver modules for each, and all sharing the same antenna ?
Thanks
Answer
Yes, even though several wireless technologies (WIFI, Bluetooth, ZigBee) can work in the same 2,4 GHz frecuency, you still need a transceiver (transmiter and receiver chip) which supports specifically this technology. In the case of ZigBee, you need an IEEE-802.15.4-compliant transceiver chip.
The idea of including a ZigBee module in one phone is quite interesting. However, I am afraid that you will not find many phones like this. May this change in the future? I have no clue.
Could you give us please more information about your Project? On these kind of projects you usually do not need your phone to be part of the ZigBee network. The coordinator could be connected to one normal PC, and you can provide access to the ZigBee network through an web application. From this application you can serve all data gathered in the network, see the status of the nodes and even send commands.
Another possibility, is to create a network bridge between two technologies, so you can plug a ZigBee chip to your phone through USB, WIFI, Bluetooth, Android port, ... But in this case, unless you find a final product, you will have to assemble some chips and write some code.