Wireless chip

Freescale Semiconductor has released the next-generation MC13224 device in its single-chip IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee platform-in-package family.

This latest addition to the MC1322x family is designed for a range of wireless applications, including energy management, commercial building automation, industrial control and monitoring and home entertainment control.

The family supports existing protocols, such as SMAC, IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, ZigBee stack and Synkro network protocol stack, with the ability to support the Wireless HART specification, ISA100 and 6LoWPAN.

The MC13224 is designed to provide an integrated solution and low power consumption. Designers need only add an antenna and crystal.

The 13224 contains a 32-bit ARM7 microcontroller, a transceiver, flash, RAM and ROM, high-performance peripherals, balun and RF matching components.

This is all integrated into a small footprint land-grid array (LGA) package that virtually eliminates the need for external RF matching components.

Typical transmit currents of 28 mA and receive currents of 21 mA can even be lower with MCU bus stealing enabled.

With receive sensitivity of up to -100 dBm and maximum output power of +5 dBm, the device has onboard power supply regulation to provide for source voltages from 1.8 to 3.6 DC.

The family is engineered to double the expected battery life. It does this by providing numerous low current modes to maximise battery life with sleep or restricted performance operation and also contains an onboard buck converter that takes advantage of the operating characteristics of Li-Ion or Ni-Cad batteries.