Murata Electronics North America Z2430HPA Manuel D’Utilisation

are directly connected to a ZigBee device. That is, if a Router wants to talk to an End Device or 
Router to which it has a direct connection (the data does not have to be routed through another 
device), it can use the MAC address. However, if it wants to talk to a ZigBee device but needs 
to have the data routed through another ZigBee device, it must use the network address. 

 

The network address is assigned to ZigBee devices as they associate with the network. The 
Coordinator always has network address 

. The network addresses are assigned in such 

a way that the address contains routing information.  As a 2-byte value, the network address 
can handle 65,535 potential devices in a single ZigBee network. For a ZigBee device to send 
data to a device on the network which is not directly connected to it, the network address must 
be used. Based on the address, the ZigBee Routers can determine the next ZigBee device to 
send the data to until it reaches the intended device.  
 
If an application needs to send data to specific devices on a network, the application must 
maintain a table that links device-specific MAC addresses with their assigned Network 
addresses. The application also must be aware that the network address of a specific device 
can change due to power cycling, loss of connection, etc. Network and MAC addresses can be 
determined through the Discovery and Get IEEE Address commands. Refer to the next section 
on Discovery and Section 8 for details on these commands. 
 

 
While it is possible for ZigBee devices to only communicate among other devices on the ZigBee 
network, typically it is a requirement that the devices on the network be known to either 
applications or other devices that are not part of the ZigBee network. ZigBee supports this need 
through a Discovery process. The Discovery process reports back all of the ZigBee devices on 
the network that have joined the network. All devices respond whether directly connected or not. 
In a network of several layers of depth, it will take a series of steps to discover all of the devices 
on the network. It is not necessary for sleeping End Devices to be awake to learn of their 
presence in the network. The parent device of the sleeping End Device will report its presence. 
 
 

 
ZigBee can support three primary network topologies: Star, Cluster Tree and Mesh. Depending 
on the configuration, the number of nodes the network can support will change. ZigBee uses 
three parameters that effectively control the network topology and the number of potential 
nodes. These three parameters are Max Number of Children, Max Number of Routers and Max 
Network Depth. These parameters are determined by the stack profile being used (this is 
different than the application profile) and cannot be configured after compilation of the code.