RF devices cut the cost of multichannel telemetry

A new transceiver and transmitter claim the market's lowest total system cost solution for multichannel one- and two-way RF links operating in 315, 433, 868 and 915MHz ISM bands.

RF IC specialist Chipcon has released two new products based on its SmartRF04 technology platform.

An expansion of the CC1000/1050 product line, the CC1100 multichannel RF transceiver and the CC1150 multichannel RF transmitter claim the market's lowest total system cost solution for multichannel one- and two-way RF links operating in the 315, 433, 868 and 915MHz licence-free ISM bands.

Besides being extremely cost and power efficient, the CC1100/1150 products require minimal external components, making them ideal for a variety of consumer and industrial control applications such as sensor networking, AMR (automatic meter reading of electricity, gas and water), home and industrial automation (light and heating control etc), alarm and security (smoke detectors, movement sensors etc), automotive and consumer electronics (toys, walkie talkies etc).

Key features of the CC1100/1150 products include high performance and low power consumption.

In addition to the already very low RX current consumption of 13-15mA (depending on the required communication range), the CC1100 includes a wake-on-radio function that will dramatically lower the average system power consumption in a polled receiver system.

The voltage range of the devices (1.8 to 3.6V) enables full use of the battery capacity.

The startup time from power-down mode is as short as 0.5ms.

The products are equipped with burst mode data transmission capabilities which allow the user to use the chips' high over-the-air datarate to reduce the average current consumption.

The programmable RF datarate (1.2 to 500Kbit/s) allows designers to freely trade off range against power consumption, to find an optimal solution for their systems.

The chips are pin- and register compatible, allowing customers to use the same firmware for systems operating both at 2.4GHz and below 1GHz.

No compromises have been made on the radio performance of the products.

The receiver of the CC1100 has a high sensitivity (-110dBm at 1.2Kbit/s) and is designed for robust operation with excellent selectivity and blocking performance.

Their multichannel capabilities make them ideal for frequency-agile, listen-before-transmit and frequency hopping (FHSS) systems.

The products support FSK, OOK and MSK modulation methods.

Both the CC1100 and the CC1150 provide 10dBm output power in all frequency bands.

Together with excellent sensitivity, this provides a very good link budget and long range.

Also, the chips can transmit with a broad enough frequency spectrum to satisfy the FCC requirements for DTS operation, where higher output powers than -1dBm are allowed in the 902-928MHz frequency band without using frequency hopping.

The devices have on-chip support for full packet handling including preamble generation, sync word insertion/detection, address check, flexible packet length and automatic CRC.

These features significantly off-load the external MCU and enable the use of very low cost MCUs.

Svein Anders Tunheim, CTO of Chipcon said: "The CC1100 and CC1150 usher in a new era for sub-1GHz RF chips, with their advanced digital functionality including forward-error correction (FEC), large 64byte FIFOs and software compatibility with Chipcon's latest 2.4GHz radios".

"The devices also require extremely few external components, dispersing with the SAW filters and tight-tolerance inductors often used in competing solutions".

"The very low cost means that for the first time, multichannel systems can be considered to replace obsolescent single-channel systems", added Birgit Opland, VP of Marketing at Chipcon.

"A multichannel solution will have much better coexistence capabilities, and provide a much better fit to regulatory requirements such as frequency hopping in the US and listen-before-transmit protocols in Europe".

The CC1100 is offered in a 4 x 4mm 20-pin QFP package and the CC1150 in a 4 x 4mm 16-pin QFP package.

The tiny chip footprints combined with a small number of external components enables the smallest possible form factor of a transceiver/transmitter solution.

The CC1100 and CC1150 are supported by a combined development kit, the CC1100/CC1150DK.

Customers who have already bought the CC2500/CC2550DK can buy the CC1100EMK for $100 and the CC1150EMK for $50 to upgrade their development kits.

In million-off quantities, the CC1100 and CC1150 will be offered at $1.3 and $0.8, respectively.

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