Silicon Labs and the Z-Wave Alliance have announced plans to open the Z-Wave Specification as a ratified, multi-source wireless standard available to all silicon and stack vendors for development. With this change, semiconductor and software suppliers will be able to join the Z-Wave ecosystem, contribute to future advancements of the smart home standard, and develop and supply sub-GHz Z-Wave radio devices and software stacks. The Z-Wave Alliance will expand to a standards development organization for the Z-Wave Specification and will continue to manage the Z-Wave Certification program, which will include software and hardware.
Expected to be available in the second half of 2020, the opened Z-Wave Specification will include the ITU.G9959 PHY/MAC radio specification, the application layer, the network layer and the host-device communication protocol. Instead of being a single-source specification, Z-Wave will become a multi-source, wireless smart home standard developed by collective working group members of the Z-Wave Alliance. With more than 100 million interoperable devices deployed, more than 3200 certified products and over 700 member companies, Z-Wave has the most mature and pervasive smart home ecosystem in the market.
Silicon Labs is committed to IoT standardization. By expanding access to Z-Wave as a standard supported by multiple vendors, the smart home ecosystem will benefit both from broader technology support as well as accelerated market adoption.
Silicon Labs will continue to invest in Z-Wave technology and contribute to its future growth, collaborating with new suppliers through the expanded Z-Wave Alliance. Development on the opened Z-Wave Specification will be managed by the new working groups in the Alliance in Q3 2020, and details on the silicon and stack platform certification program also will be announced in Q3.
To learn more about Z-Wave technology, visit silabs.com/z-wave.
For more information about Z-Wave Alliance membership, visit z-wavealliance.org/z-wave-specification.
This article originally ran on residentialsytems.com
See also: Z-Wave Alliance Hosts Annual Fall Summit
