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Z-Wave opened to silicon and stack suppliers

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 this 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 organisation for the Z-Wave specification and will continue to manage the Z-Wave certification programme, 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 enjoys a highly mature and pervasive smart home ecosystem in the market.

Alliance members and smart home consumers can benefit from the hallmark features of Z-Wave, including interoperability, backwards compatibility, the S2 security framework, easy installation with SmartStart, low-power functionality with a 10-year battery life and long-range with sub-GHz mesh. The Z-Wave Alliance will maintain the certification programme and expand the offering to provide technology vendors with both hardware and stack certification and product manufacturers with application layer certification.

“As a standards organisation, the Z-Wave Alliance will help solve the interoperability challenges hindering the adoption of smart home devices,” said Mitch Klein, executive director for the Z-Wave Alliance. “Members will work together on a single sub-GHZ connectivity solution that guarantees the forward-and-backward compatibility, interoperability, security and robustness needed to grow the IoT. The Z-Wave Alliance will collectively advance a fully realised smart home standard.”

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 programme also will be announced in Q3.

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