As the IEEE 802.15.4-Standard together with the Physical- and MAC-Layer was passed in May 2003, new development opportunities arose for the ZigBee. ZigBee builds on the IEEE 802.15.4-Standard, and is still in the testing phase. However it aspires to become a standard within industrial and home devices. Established producers promote and fund the development.

The purpose of this work was to establish sound foundations for further software and hardware work in ZigBee. First, the needed information had to be collected such as data sheets, 802.15.4-Specifications and publications of ZigBee and ZigBee members. Secondly the material was studied, and evaluations boards were taken in operation. Connection test were carried out and analysed. Further testing regarding coverage in good and bad conditions (a thicker wall for instance) resulted in a distance of 50 respectively 30 metres under worse conditions. After that the MAC-protocol that was delivered with the evaluation board, was analysed and found to nearly conform to the official standard (all except GTS-functions are implemented). The Software was then successfully installed and tested. Finally, hardware was built to show the simplicity of a ZigBee-system (only one microcontroller and a radio part is required) and to allow further development to be done with different microcontrollers.