Amazon Awarded Patent to Send ZigBee IoT Signals Over Power Cable – Security Sales & Integration
Amazon patent describes how a ZigBee radio could be coupled to a power cable to separate wireless traffic from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other radios deployed in a home-automation device like a video camera. (Credit: USPTO and CE Pro)
SEATTLE — These days, manufacturers are piling every type of IoT radio – WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, cellular, sensor – into ever-shrinking smart devices to cover consumer’s needs. However, this creates the potential for interference among the many RF signals.
Amazon has been awarded a patent for technology that would offload some of those wireless signals onto a power cable attached to a smart device. The patent singles out ZigBee home automation technology for offloading, and illustrates the invention with an increasingly common IoT scenario: a front-door video camera or doorbell (powered over AC/DC) communicating with the Internet (WiFi) and a smartphone or beacons (Bluetooth), as well as a door lock (ZigBee).