Taking the RF out of Wireless

Typical problems of a wireless application designer

Need to solve
Output RF matching Eliminate TX/RX offset Keep Battery life in hand Lowest time to market

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 ?

Expensive production tuning

Global ISM Bands

2.4GHz is the Worldwide Standard

MRF49XA Sub-GHz Transceiver

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Feature Highlights
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433/868/915 MHz Support with FSK Modulation

Fully integrated (low BOM, easy design-in) Fast-settling, programmable, high-resolution PLL synthesizer

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Integrated power amplifier (+7 dBm Tx pwr) High receiver sensitivity ( -110 dB)
Analog and digital RSSI outputs Automatic frequency control (AFC)

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2.2 3.8V operating voltage

Low Power Consumption, Standby Current 0.3uA

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Compact 16-pin TSSOP package

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Applications
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AMR - Remote meter reading Home, Building, Industrial Automation RKE and Tire Pressure Monitoring POS, Toy, and HID

Availability
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Available Now at www.microchipdirect.com

Certified RF Transceiver Module Reference Design IN DEVELPOMENT

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Module features:
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Microchips MRF49XA 868/915 MHz transceiver Integrated PCB antenna Matching circuit components FCC (U.S.A.), IC (Canada), and ETSI (Europe) compliant Surface-mountable PCB Receiver Sensitivity -110 dBm

Supports Microchip Wireless stacks:

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MiWi and MiWi P2P

Similar in Design to the MRF24J40MA Same Foot Print Same size

MRF49XA Main Parameters

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No external antenna switch needed 2 x 8-bit Transmit register 16-bit Receive Register Automatic antenna tuning No external RF parts (excl. 10 MHz quartz crystal and balun)

MRF49XA Architectural Diagram

Standard SPI Operation

Simple SPI based communication:

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Setup the RF parameters

O Frequency

Band select O Deviation, BBW, etc

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Control the power saving modes

O Enable

/ Disable internal blocks

Read / write data in FIFO mode

O Direct

RX FIFO access

Data Transmitting (Using TX Register)

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Internal bit rate generator:

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300 bps 115 kbps

MCU communication:
Standard SPI command to access TX register O Interrupt driven MCU routines
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Advantages:
Less load of the MCU O Lower clock rate for the MCU -> save battery
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Data Receiving (Using RX Register)

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

Advantages:
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Significantly less load on the MCU Automatic frame synchronization

SPI pins

PIC MCU

nIRQ nFFS (optional)

MRF49XA

Keep Battery Life in hand What affects battery life ?

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Radio chip related parameters

O Current

consumption in different operating modes consumption in different operating modes

Microcontroller related parameters

O Current

Protocol related parameters

O Bit

rate O Frame size

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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 doesnt wake up unless a valid packet arrives (noise doesnt 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

MRF49XA Development Boards

Explorer 16 Dev Board
Part # DM240002

MRF49XA PICtail/PICtail Plus Daughter Boards

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

MRF49XA Radio Utility Program

RF link configuration O Transmit mode O Receive mode O Ping-Pong and PER test O Downloadable from WEB soon
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Design Resources on WEB

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AN1252 - Interfacing the MRF49XA Transceiver to PIC Microcontrollers AN1283 - Microchip Wireless (MiWi) Media Access Controller - MiMAC AN1284 - Microchip Wireless (MiWi) Application Programming Interface - MiApp MRF49XA Demo Application MRF49XA PICtail/PICtail Plus Daughter Board User's Guide

Trademarks
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The 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.