In 2024, the IW612
Wi-Fi 6 Tri-Radio SoC was launched to the market with Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth/Bluetooth Low Energy and Thread support to enable Thread Border
Router products for the growing Matter Ecosystem (smart home hubs,
controllers, smart speakers, etc). Matter also supports legacy or other
Smart Home technologies and ecosystems such as Zigbee.
Building the Bridge Between Current and Next Gen Smart Home Networks
Launched by the Connectivity Standard Alliance (previously known as Zigbee
Alliance) in 2005, the Zigbee standard provides high maturity and wide deployment. Its implementation has a compact code memory footprint, and its
reduced RF protocol overhead allows for shorter radio communication duration
enabling long battery life. It also makes the Zigbee protocol more scalable
under dense RF network conditions.
With its IEEE 802.15.4 radio capabilities, the IW612
hardware has all the required functionalities to support Zigbee and even to operate simultaneously on Thread and Zigbee networks. With
these hardware capabilities, it was a logical next step to expand the
functionalities of this Tri-Radio chipset to support Zigbee.
Employing the system benefit of our Tri-Radio IW612, our Zigbee solution offers best-in-class coexistence with other critical
Matter technologies, making it an ideal choice for building a Matter to Zigbee bridge product or a Zigbee Gateway.
The IW612 software release package and Zigbee user guide can help developers get started. Download the release package and the user manual.
Choosing a Scalable Radio Co-Processor Architecture
To optimize the scalability of our Zigbee solution, we selected a radio
co-processor approach and implemented a MAC split architecture. The IEEE
802.15.4 PHY and MAC layers are handled by the IW612
firmware while the Zigbee stack runs on a Linux based MPU, such as any of our i.MX Applications Processors, with wider memory resources and higher processing power.
This way, the MPU is able to operate as a Zigbee coordinator or router
on a large network with almost no restrictions on the network size.
Figure 1 – IW612 Zigbee MAC Split architecture. For a better experience, download the
block diagram.
Using a Scalable and Widely Deployed Zigbee Stack
To provide best-in-class interoperability, our IW612
Zigbee solution is based on the platform-agnostic and widely deployed Zigbee
stack ZBOSS. Developed and maintained by the ZBOSS Open Initiative (ZOI), ZBOSS
is a field-proven and mature solution on Linux hosted platforms.
NXP selects ZBOSS Zigbee stack for the IW612 Wi-Fi 6 Tri-Radio solution.
Read more from ZOI .
Compliant With Latest Standards
As a certified Zigbee R23 ZCP compliant platform, our IW612 is interoperable with all Zigbee 3.0 compliant devices, including NXP MCX W71, MCX W72, K32W0x and JN51xx.
It is also de facto interoperable with any other ZBOSS based product.
Supported Platforms
Our Zigbee solution is currently supported on i.MX MPU + IW612 radio
co-processor. It will also be enabled on the Industrial/IoT optimized IW610 Wi-Fi 6 solution.
For quick prototyping, the NXP i.MX93 FRDM board with its built-in u-blox
IW612 wireless module can be used.
FRDM-IMX93 (including u-blox IW612 module).
Quarterly software updates will be provided as part of the
meta-nxp-connectivity releases.
Developers can use meta-nxp-connectivity for building their own i.MX Linux
BSP image and include their own Zigbee application inside using Yocto.
Fetch releases directly from NXP’s GitHub. Find the related Yocto recipes .
Best-in-Class Multi-Radio Coexistence
Having all radios integrated into a single chipset, our IW612 solution
has been optimized for best-in-class and seamless multi-radio coexistence
using a dedicated hardware accelerator. It has been fine tuned for
supporting Bluetooth LE commissioning and Bluetooth LE sensors aggregated
in parallel with Zigbee and/or Thread with a shared antenna. Coexistence
performance has also been optimized for supporting Wi-Fi on a second
antenna with minimum influence on Zigbee / Thread and Bluetooth LE.
Dual PAN Support
To fully support the new Matter ecosystem to legacy Zigbee, our IW612 solution
also has Dual PAN capabilities which brings all the required connectivity within a single chipset:
- Thread for low power / low data rate Matter communication
- Bluetooth LE for commissioning or sensors aggregation
- Wi-Fi for higher data rate Matter communication
- Zigbee for legacy low power / low data rate devices
To highlight the powerful capabilities of the IW612, it can be implemented to operate as a Thread Border Router concurrently to a Zigbee coordinator or router and a Zigbee to Matter bridge device.
