Zilog, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the IXYS Corporation, has introduced its RadioPulse MG2420 Transceiver, a single-chip 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee compliant radio transceiver. Zilog specializes in application specific microcontroller (MCU) solutions for the industrial, telecommunication, automotive, and consumer markets.
The MG2420 operates from 2.4 to 2.48 GHz with enhanced data rates with channel coding from1 to 3 Mbps. This transceiver can be controlled by an external microcontroller and its operations configured through a high speed Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). It has ultra-low power consumption, and consumes 15.4 mA in the receiver (Rx) mode and 16.1 mA in the transmitter (Tx) mode with 0 dBm output power. The MG2420’s high data rate utilization (3 Mbps) helps minimize transmission and reception time, leading to further reduction in power consumption.
The Zilog’s MG2420 is a single-chip RF transceiver in a compact 4 x 4 x 0.85 mm package. It includes an RF front-end, VCO, PLL, digital block including baseband modem, MAC, power management, and a high speed SPI.
The transceiver core operates at 1.2V, and its I/O pin voltages can range from 1.8 V to 3.6 V. There are several on-chip voltage regulators to separately power the analog and digital blocks. The current consumption is just under one microamp in the power saving “Deep Sleep” mode. Also, no external T/R switch and filter are needed since the bidirectional differential RF pins are used. Other key features include Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), MSK (O-QPSK) modulation, digital RSSI output, two 256-byte FIFOs, AES-128 engine, and automatic ACK transmission.
The MG2420 displays excellent interference rejection. It can receive a desired signal even when there is interference from ZigBee or other communication devices such as wi-fi or bluetooth. It also has a longer communication range based on high transmit power up to +9 dBm and high sensitivity of –97 dBm at 250 Kbps. Only a few external components like RF matching network, crystal, bias resistor, and antenna, are necessary to achieve an optimized lower cost solution.
This new transceiver from Zilog is well suited for home automation and security, automatic meter reading, factory automation and motor control, remote keyless entry with acknowledgement, low power telemetry, toys and gaming peripherals, remote controller for consumer electronics, audio/video, and medical devices.
Zilog’s RadioPulse MG2420 Transceiver is now available and can be purchased via their distribution channels.