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I am trying to develop a basic Zigbee device that can send data back and forth. Now I am facing the problem of not knowing what a basic FCS Frame Control Sequence may be. There are some fields which are well explained everywhere, but for some I don't know what I should write to them. See e.g. here: http://www.rfwireless-world.com/Tutorials/Zigbee-MAC-layer-frame-format.html

What are the fields Frame Pending, Dest Addressing Mode and Source Addressing Mode for? What to write into these fields? I've searched the web but found nothig that explained this thouroughly. Does anyone have a reference I did not find? Thanks Jo

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I think your question shows a bit of a lack of understanding, but I'll try and provide a few pointers at least.

You should read the ZigBee protocol standards for starters if you want to understand ZigBee.

You may also be mixing up "FCS Frame Control Sequence" - the FCS in your link is the Frame Check Sequence - it's an error check (ie CRC). The Frame Control is a bitfield containing information about the frame contents.

The ZigBee protocol is a layered protocol. The MAC layer that you refer to is actually part of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol rather than ZigBee, and is not normally something the user has direct control over when communicating with a ZigBee Dongle (including the TI stack, although I don't know the 2520 specifically but I assume it runs the standard TI ZStack).

If you are using TI chipset, then you should read the ZStack documentation from TI as this will control the MAC layer (and others) - you will not need to worry about this.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes I meant the Frame Control bitfield, I only confused the abbrevation. Thank you, unfortunately I have no way of getting the IEEE specification and hoped for some "short cut". Anyway, the two links you provide helped me, and as always I could have come up with those myself... \$\endgroup\$
    – jjstcool
    Jul 11, 2018 at 17:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ You should not need to worry about the MAC layer - the TI ZStack will handle this layer for you if you are using ZigBee. I'd suggest to focus on the TI documentation if you are set on using the TI framework. \$\endgroup\$
    – cdjackson
    Jul 11, 2018 at 17:35

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