Basic Green Power Network#

A basic Green Power (GP) network consists of three separate devices:

  1. Green Power Device (GPD)

  2. A Z3 Proxy or Green Power Proxy (GPP)

  3. A Green Power Sink (GPS)

GPD Frames (GPDF) are transmitted by the GPD devices and received by a Proxy or a Combination (Sink and Proxy) device. The GPP will then encapsulate the received GPDF within a standard Zigbee frame and forward the GPDF packets across the Zigbee PRO / Z3 network in the form of notifications to the Sink that that has been paired with the end device. In a Combination device, the Proxy side is responsible for forwarding the GPDF packets. The following figure illustrates the data flow from the GPD to the GPP and finally to the GPS.

Basic Green Power Message TransmissionBasic Green Power Message Transmission

As indicated in the following figure, the GPDF is shorter than a standard Zigbee frame (indicated by the dashed line). This allows a GPD to transmit a GPDF using less power than a standard Zigbee frame as the radio transmitter is active for less time.

GPDF SizeGPDF Size

GPDs are strictly one-way devices once in use, although they may optionally support bidirectional data exchange during pairing. GPDs should not be considered end devices and Zigbee considers them as less than Zigbee End Devices (ZEDs). For more information on ZEDs, see Zigbee Fundamentals.