US Patent 7564786 Multicast method in zigbee network

A method to manage nodes in a ZigBee network. In a ZigBee network including a plurality of nodes, a multicast group is generated including at least two nodes among the plurality of the nodes. A multicast group coordinator (GC) which manages the multicast group is set among the nodes forming the multicast group. The multicast group includes the GC, a multicast group member (GM) requesting to join the multicast group, and/or a multicast router (MR) which links GMs to each other or links the GC and the GC. Accordingly, since the GC manages the multicast group, the load is decreased and the packet data transmission rate is enhanced.