Migration from ZigBee to IPv6 based Lighting System

The vision of the IoT is the embedded devices, also known as smart objects which are becoming IP enabled and an important part of the Internet. The IPv4 address is 32 bits and it is saturating. Hence using IPv6 address is preferred. The 6LoWPAN is built on IEEE 802.15.4 and it uses IPv6 address. The 6LoWPAN can communicate with IEEE 802.15.4 devices and any other types of devices on the Internet.6LoWPAN uses RPL protocol for routing. The ZigBee is also built on the IEEE 802.15.4 and other layers are implemented on top of that. The problem with ZigBee is interoperability ie to communicate with non-ZigBee devices it needs a separate gateway. But in 6LoWPAN, the nodes can communicate with the devices of same network and any other devices. This paper discusses about 6LoWPAN technology and compares it with ZigBee.