Can Matter replace ZigBee?

Matter is derived from ZigBee's ZCL, and Matter also has a platform for the ZigBee Alliance, so can Matter replace ZigBee? The answer is no.

First of all, Matter seems to be able to connect WIFI and low-power devices on the surface, but Matter needs an IEEE802.15.4 and IEEE802.11 bridging device, that is, an "edge gateway", so Matter still needs to rely on the gateway.

Secondly, when a Matter device is connected to the network, it needs human-computer interaction on the device side. Therefore, many Matter chips are ZigBee and BLE dual-mode chips. When connecting, use BLE to set up, and after connecting, switch to IEEE802, which is the same as ZigBee. 15.4 mode.

In addition, Matter is based on IPv6, so the chip resource consumption of the protocol stack is much larger than that of ZigBee. Although the cost of chips can be reduced by the number of chips, the software development cost and software maintenance cost of Matter are also higher than ZigBee.

In fact, Matter is not intended to replace ZigBee, but to complement ZigBee. At present, only version 1.0 of Matter is released, which is far less mature and reliable than ZigBee 3.0. Moreover, Matter will be backward compatible with ZigBee in the future. Since Matter uses the same IEEE802.15.4 protocol as ZigBee, and Matter is also derived from ZCL, there may be bridge devices between ZigBee and Matter in the future.

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