“Taking the RF out of Wireless”

Typical problems of a wireless application designer

Need to solve Common Alternatives– Hire RF Consultant ?

– Buy expensive equipments and calibrate every units ?

– Use larger battery pack ?

– Spend lot of development time with uncertain results ?

– Design automatic calibration ?

– Output RF matching

– Eliminate TX/RX offset

– Keep Battery life in hand

– Lowest time to market

– Expensive production tuning

Global ISM Bands

2.4GHz is the Worldwide Standard

MRF49XASub-GHz Transceiver

Feature Highlights433/868/915 MHz Support with FSK ModulationFully integrated (low BOM, easy design-in) Fast-settling, programmable, high-resolution PLL synthesizer Integrated power amplifier (+7 dBm Tx pwr)High receiver sensitivity ( -110 dB)Analog and digital RSSI outputs Automatic frequency control (AFC) 2.2 – 3.8V operating voltageLow Power Consumption, Standby Current 0.3uACompact 16-pin TSSOP package

ApplicationsAMR - Remote meter readingHome, Building, Industrial AutomationRKE and Tire Pressure MonitoringPOS, Toy, and HID

AvailabilityAvailable Now atwww.microchipdirect.com

Certified RF Transceiver Module Reference Design –IN DEVELPOMENT

Module features:Microchip’s MRF49XA 868/915 MHz transceiver Integrated PCB antennaMatching circuit componentsFCC (U.S.A.), IC (Canada), and ETSI (Europe) compliantSurface-mountable PCBReceiver Sensitivity -110 dBm

Supports Microchip Wireless stacks:

MiWi™ and MiWi P2P

Similar in Design to the MRF24J40MASame Foot Print

Same size

MRF49XA Main Parameters

No external antenna switch needed2 x 8-bit Transmit register16-bit Receive RegisterAutomatic antenna tuningNo external RF parts (excl. 10 MHz quartz crystal and balun)

MRF49XA Architectural Diagram

Standard SPI Operation

Simple SPI based communication:Setup the RF parameters

Frequency Band selectDeviation, BBW, etc…

Control the power saving modesEnable / Disable internal blocks

Read / write data in FIFO modeDirect RX FIFO access

Data Transmitting (Using TX Register)

Internal bit rate generator:300 bps – 115 kbps

MCU communication:Standard SPI command to access TX registerInterrupt driven MCU routines

Advantages:Less load of the MCULower clock rate for the MCU -> save battery

Data Receiving (Using RX Register)

Advantages:Significantly less load on the MCUAutomatic frame synchronization MRF49XA

PICMCU

SPI pins

nIRQ

nFFS (optional)

• RX Register is automatically filled with the received data • RX Synchronous Pattern Recognition• FIFO Interrupt if new data available in RX Register• Data can be read by standard SPI command

Keep Battery Life in hand

What affects battery life ?Radio chip related parameters

Current consumption in different operating modesMicrocontroller related parameters

Current consumption in different operating modesProtocol related parameters

Bit rateFrame size

Battery capacity

How does the radio chip help to extend battery life?

Special mode of operation of the receiver (Low-Power Duty Cycle Mode):

MRF49XA periodically wakes up and scans the air and wakes up the microcontroller only if needed.MCU doesn’t wake up unless a valid packet arrives (noise doesn’t cause the micro to wake up!)Note:

• Time base is from the internal wake-up timer (1.5uA)

• Sleep and scan periods are programmable in wide range (from 1ms to more than days)

Receiver Low Power Duty Cycle Mode

MRF49XADevelopment Boards

MRF49XA PICtail™/PICtail Plus Daughter Boards

Part # AC164137-1 (433 MHz),Part # AC164137-2 (868/915 MHz)

Explorer 16 Dev BoardPart # DM240002

MRF49XA Radio Utility Program

RF link configurationTransmit modeReceive modePing-Pong andPER testDownloadablefrom WEB soon

Design Resources on WEB

AN1252 - Interfacing the MRF49XA Transceiver to PIC Microcontrollers AN1283 - Microchip Wireless (MiWi) Media Access Controller - MiMACAN1284 - Microchip Wireless (MiWi) Application Programming Interface - MiAppMRF49XA Demo Application MRF49XA PICtail/PICtail Plus Daughter Board User's Guide

TrademarksThe Microchip name and logo, the Microchip logo, dsPIC, KeeLoq, KeeLoq logo, MPLAB, PIC, PICmicro, PICSTART, rfPIC and UNI/O are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries.FilterLab, Hampshire, HI-TECH C, Linear Active Thermistor, MXDEV, MXLAB, SEEVAL and The Embedded Control Solutions Company are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A.Analog-for-the-Digital Age, Application Maestro, CodeGuard, dsPICDEM, dsPICDEM.net, dsPICworks, dsSPEAK, ECAN, ECONOMONITOR, FanSense, HI-TIDE, In-Circuit Serial Programming, ICSP, ICEPIC, Mindi, MiWi, MPASM, MPLAB Certified logo, MPLIB, MPLINK, mTouch, nanoWatt XLP, Omniscient Code Generation, PICC, PICC-18, PICkit, PICDEM, PICDEM.net, PICtail, PIC32 logo, REAL ICE, rfLAB, Select Mode, Total Endurance, TSHARC, WiperLock and ZENA are trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries.SQTP is a service mark of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A.All other trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective companies.© 2009, Microchip Technology Incorporated, Printed in the U.S.A., All Rights Reserved.