Wireless Data Transmission; Transmission Methods; Broadcast Transmission - Digi XBee Zigbee Mesh Kit User Manual

Wireless data transmission

This section explains data transmission and guides you through an example to illustrate how it works.
If you get stuck, see Troubleshooting.

Transmission methods

An XBee module can communicate with multiple devices or with just one device:
Broadcast transmissions are sent to many or all modules in the network.
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Unicast transmissions route wireless data from one XBee to one destination module.
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Broadcast transmission

Broadcast means to transmit the same data to all nodes on a network. These transmissions are
propagated throughout the entire network so that all possible nodes receive the transmission.
To accomplish this, the coordinator and all routers that receive a broadcast transmission re-transmit
the data three times. When a router or coordinator delivers a broadcast transmission to an end device
child, it sends the transmission only once, immediately after the end device wakes and polls the
parent for new data.
You can address broadcast transmissions using either the 64-bit broadcast address or the 16-bit
broadcast address:
If the 64-bit broadcast address (000000000000FFFF) is used, set the 16-bit address to
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unknown address (FFFE).
If the 16-bit broadcast address (FFFF) form is used, set the 64-bit address to unknown
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address (FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF).
Note Because the XBee modules re-transmit broadcast transmissions by every device in the network,
broadcast messages should be used sparingly.
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