Z-Wave Alliance Announces New Long Range Specification

The Z-Wave Alliance, a standards organization dedicated to developing and advancing the popular Z-Wave wireless smart home protocol, recently announced its new Z-Wave Long Range (Z-Wave LR) specification. The new spec is reportedly engineered to provide significantly extended wireless range and support robust networks. According to the release, Z-Wave LR extends Z-Wave connectivity beyond the interior boundaries of the home to improve wireless transmission range of peripheral Z-Wave devices such as door locks, garage door sensors, gate access solutions, and more, while increasing scalability to over 2000 nodes on a single smart home network.

Developed and managed by the new Z-Wave Alliance Technical & Certifications workgroup, Z-Wave LR is designed to enable expanded options for the smart home, multi-dwelling units and hospitality use cases, the Alliance said. Z-Wave LR reportedly eliminates the need for a repeater within the network by increasing the transmission range, unlocking new potential for Z-Wave networks and making it easier to enroll smart home and IoT devices deployed at the end of the yard or beyond for enhanced functionality. Z-Wave LR also increases scalability on a single smart home network to over 2000 nodes – a 10x increase, the release asserted.

The Z-Wave LR specification will be managed and certified under the Z-Wave Plus V2 certification program, which currently mandates the inclusion of the enhanced S2 security framework as well as SmartStart, a setup feature that enables true plug and play for the consumer smart home.

“The Z-Wave LR specification is the first of many technical developments to come from within the new Alliance standards development organizational structure,” said Mitchell Klein, executive director, Z-Wave Alliance. “As smart home networks continue to grow, mature, and add more complex devices, there is a need for more robust technology to support them. With Z-Wave LR, we are building upon Z-Wave’s legacy of strong networks by supporting more devices in a home or building with increased node counts and greater range. It’s more important than ever that IoT devices live on strong, reliable networks, and we’re excited to support this with the latest Z-Wave specification.”