connectivityZONE Products for the week of October 27, 2008
Cypress Semiconductor Says…
Most Reliable 2.4-GHz Solution for Embedded Control Applications
CyFi starter kit showcases unmatched interference immunity, intelligent power management and ease-of-use, along with flexibility and integration of PSoC technology
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has introduced a complete 2.4-GHz solution for the embedded market. The new CyFi Low-Power RF solution delivers the industry’s leading combination of reliable connectivity, power-efficiency and superior range, and is supported by the flexible and easy-to-use PSoC programmable system-on-chip. The solution is optimized for low-power wireless sensor networks and human-to-machine interfaces in a broad range of applications, including home and building automation, remote controls, health and fitness equipment, and industrial monitoring.
Cypress also rolled out a PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit with CyFi Low-Power RF (CY3271) to easily evaluate the quick prototyping and debugging of wireless systems based on the CyFi solution, along with development and expansion kits to streamline system design for beginning and expert designers.
“The CyFi solution opens significant new opportunities in the wireless embedded control market for Cypress, bringing our low-power, robust wireless technology and the versatility and integration of PSoC to a host of new applications,” said Dinesh Ramanathan, executive vice president of the Data Communication Division at Cypress. “With a drag and drop in our software, even novice wireless designers can cut the cord for their applications in minutes.”
CyFi Low-Power RF enables designers to quickly and simply implement wireless systems without compromising reliable performance, or low-power consumption. The solution consists of the CyFi protocol stack in PSoC Designer embedded design software, the selected PSoC device, and the CyFi transceiver (CYRF7936). The solution’s unrivaled interference immunity is a result of its Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) modulation and the agility to move to 80 channels in the 2.4-GHz band. It intelligently manages DSSS, data-rate and agility to minimize retransmissions, maximizing time in sleep mode for increased power efficiency. CyFi transceivers are powered by PSoC devices, which can replace multiple discrete components, integrate numerous functions and can be reprogrammed at any stage of development. The CyFi protocol stack offers a pre-configured, customizable PSoC firmware module that can be dropped into the PSoC Designer 5.0 integrated development environment (IDE) with no complex coding.
The kits supporting the CyFi solution include:
- The CY3271 PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit with CyFi Low-Power RF is a low-cost USB thumbdrive kit including PSoC IDE software, a sense and control dashboard for data collection, a PC dongle with RF, a multifunction board, an RF expansion board with power amplifiers for long-range wireless applications, and two battery boards. Designers can also use the kit to leverage the touch-sensing, temperature-sensing, lighting-sensing and proximity sensing capabilities of PSoC devices.
- The CY3271-EXP1 Environmental Sensing Kit is the first of many future expansion kits to the CY3271. It enables a wireless sensor solution with pressure, humidity, temperature and ambient light sensors.
- The CY3271-RFBOARD RF Expansion Kit is an add-on to the CY3271 that provides two additional RF expansion and AAA battery boards—allowing further evaluation of the CyFi Low-Power RF solution.
- The CyFi Low-Power RF Development Kit (CY3210-CYFI) is a general-purpose development kit that enables seamless prototyping and debugging of PSoC devices and CyFi transceivers. The kit includes two development boards, two PSoC modules and three CyFi modules to build wireless applications.
EN-Genius Says…
Cypress low-power wireless sensor networking products are a great way to add intelligence to anything from building automation systems, precision agriculture, and anywhere else you need to improve efficiency or productivity of a large, distributed system. Their new development kits make it easier than ever to apply their single-chip mixed-signal PSoC controllers and single-chip radios to your application by starting out with simple reference designs that can be easily customized to your particular needs.
The kits use a new single-chip radio that is a bit different from their earlier ZigBee-like PRoC devices. While it still operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, Cypress says that their CYRF7936 CyFi transceiver is more robust and power-efficient in applications which require intermittent bursts of data across noisy, congested environments. One nice example of how this technology can be put to use are the energy-saving wireless thermostat, gauge reader, and industrial sensor system that another Cypress company recently introduced (reviewed this week in greentechZONE).
The CYRF7936 transceiver uses a combination of direct spread spectrum modulation, a simple but smart protocol stack, and active link management techniques to ensure a reliable data link, even under the harshest channel conditions. The protocol stack determines channel selection, spreading codes, and CRCs, calculated based on a hub chip’s unique ID code. All remote nodes can calculate the frequency subset being used from the ID code and then ping the hub to establish a link. A CyFi network normally operates on a fixed channel but if it sees too much interference (based on BER and RSSI), or loses contact with its other nodes, it will switch channels and initiate a ping sequence on a new channel until the link is re-established. Since most applications will be used for irregular, bursty data transmissions, the CyFi air interface protocol has been developed to use the least amount of energy by adjusting both data rate and output power to the minimum required for a reliable link. Despite all its clever features, the CyFi software stack only requires 8 kbit worth of memory to implement a hub and 5 kbit for node, compared to 46 kbit and 26 kbit for an equivalent ZigBee system.
Depending on channel conditions and how much transmit power you can afford, the CYRF7936 can send and receive data at 125 kbit/s, 250 kbit/s, and 1 Mbit/s. Its link management function can vary the transmitter output power between -15 dBm and +4 dBm based on the signal strength and bit error rate it sees. If you need more transmit power, Cypress says the chip can drive an inexpensive external power amplifier. Using spread spectrum modulation adds 9 – 13 dBm of coding gain to the system link budget to boost the receiver’s effective signal sensitivity to -97 dBm, a real advantage in noisy environments. In more benign conditions, the DSS can be turned off to save power and increase data capacity. With its output set at +10 dBm, the transceiver has a 200 m open space range. When its output is boosted to +20 dBm using the PA included with the developer kit the range increase claimed by Cypress is to a modest 450 m.
In its sleep mode the CYRF7936 draws 0.8 µA and 21.2 µA during the brief times it spends in receive mode. Depending on where the transmitter output power is set, it draws 20.6 - 34.0 mA when squirting out a data packet. Cypress sleep mode power consumption is not quite as low as TI’s CC2480 ZigBee transceiver (reviewed here April 2008) which draws 0.5 µA in standby but CyFi’s higher data rates may reduce the time it spends in transmit and receive modes enough that its overall power consumption is equal to, or lower than the TI solution.
Speaking of TI, Cypress has taken a similar approach to its easy-to-use development kit which also uses a low-cost USB-based dongle board as its basic platform. Cypress has gone one better than TI however and has several personality boards with various mixes of I/O and sensor capabilities which can be plugged into the dongle to suit your particular application. You also get your choice of two different battery supplies: a coin cell for low-power applications, or a pair of AAA cells if your design will be drawing a bit more juice.
The CYRF7936 CyFi transceiver is in production in QFN-40.
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