Module recommendation

XBee & XBee Gateway XBee - 802.15.4
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1

Hello,

I’m entering into a development of a multi node (up to 100 nodes), sub 1Ghz dynamic network.

The main requirements of the system are:

  • Range : > 1 mile.
  • Number of nodes: approx 100 (preferably more).
  • Nodes are mobile (i.e. not fixed) within the range and may come in/out of range occasionally.
  • Form some sort of ‘mesh’ in which any node can communicate with any other node (and be acknowledged that the message was received).
  • Each node should be ‘aware’ of each other node joining or leaving the mesh network.
  • Responsiveness - any message should reach its destination (and acknowledged) within 250ms

My questions are:

  1. Is DigiMesh suitable for the job ?
  2. Is Thread suitable for the job ?
  3. Which sub-1Ghz XBee module/s can run both mesh network stack (DigiMesh and Thread) ?
  4. What is the status of Thread stack, Is it available for deployment? I couldn’t find any trace to this in digi.com
  5. What other alternatives are out there ?

Thanks in advance for any insight shared.

2

No mesh product is going to be suitable for this. Your timing constraint is too low and not allowing time for rout discoveries to occur. I am also not sure if you are taking into account the amount of traffic that occurs over a mesh and your overall bandwidth.

Also not sure that you want a mesh or if you simply want a Peer to peer network.

3

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.

One detail that may be unclear from my description is that each node communicates with FEW (lets say 10) of the 100 nodes in the network. This happens 4/sec (can be reduced down to 2/sec).
Since the nodes are mobile, these 10 or so nodes are changing with time, hence each node should know the entire network structure and decide which are the 10 to communicate with…

Do you still think that “No mesh product is going to be suitable for this” ?

Thanks again.

4

No, that is a roaming Peer to peer network. Mesh is where you have nodes that are acting as router who forward data on to other nodes that are out of range and that path may change.

5

OK, so in this use case, what are my options and what are the risks (and mitigations) related to each ?

Thanks for any advice

6

you can use Zigbee Xbee X2C Pro which will help you to provide node to node communication with in 1 mile connection but it is not designed to be a carrier for video or voice, only for message communication its better