Chipcon has launched its first two products from the new SmartRF04 family of high performance RF-ICs. The CC2500 multichannel RF Transceiver and the CC2550 multichannel RF Transmitter, operating in the 2,4 GHz licence-free ISM band.
The CC2500 and the CC2550 are specifically designed for low-cost wireless mice and keyboards, wireless game controllers and wireless headset as well as a number of other consumer applications. The CC2500 has a typical current consumption in receive mode as low as 12-14 mA (depending on the required communication range). The voltage range of the devices (1,8 V to 3,6 V) enables full utilisation of the battery capacity. The devices also have a very low current consumption in transmit mode. At -12 dBm output power the current consumption is as low as 12 mA. Both devices are equipped with so-called burst mode data transmission capabilities with high over-the-air data rate.
No compromises have been made on the radio performance of the devices, claims the manufacturer. The receiver of the CC2500 has a high sensitivity
(-101 dBm @ 10 Kbps) and is designed for robust operation with superior selectivity and blocking performance. These are highly valuable features when operating near other 2,4 GHz wireless networks like WLAN and Bluetooth. The maximum transmitted output power for the devices is 0 dBm. The devices support programmable data rates from 1,2 Kbps up to as much as 500 Kbps. Due to their multichannel capabilities, the devices are also ideal for use in frequency agile systems. With its fast-settling frequency synthesiser the CC2500 is ideal for frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) solutions.
The devices have on-chip support of 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. The CC2500 has an on-chip Carrier Sense Indicator and digital RSSI output. Among many other features one will find Forward Error Correction with interleaving, for enhanced link reliability.
The only external components needed are a crystal and a biasing resistor in addition to a few decoupling capacitors. Two antenna configurations are supported, one single-ended and one with folded dipole antenna. With folded dipole, two ac-coupling capacitors and one inductor are needed. The CC2500 comes in 4 x 4 mm 20-pin QFP package and the CC2550 in 4 x 4 mm 16-pin QFP package.
For more information contact Kevin Jurrius, Components & System Design, +27 (0)11 979 4274, [email protected]
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