Voice communications over ZigBee networks

This article provides an overview of ZigBee-enabled wireless networks and discusses the feasibility of supporting voice communications over ZigBee networks. We begin by providing an overview of the ZigBee technology followed by an evaluation of voice quality and performance over such an impoverished wireless channel. Two types of voice communications, namely full-duplex voice over IP (VoIP) and half-duplex push-to-talk (PTF) are considered. Voice quality of VoIP is measured using the R-factor [1] (a well known objective speech quality metric). The quality of PTT, however, is evaluated based on packet-loss rate, delay, and jitter. The simulation results demonstrate that a low-power, low-rate wireless sensor network can support a limited range of voice services.