Microsemi Corporation has introduced an extremely low power sub-GHz radio frequency (RF) transceiver for industrial, security and medical applications. The new ZL70550 combines high performance wireless capability and a high level of integration in an extremely small footprint at a competitive price. The ZL70550 is well-suited for wireless applications operating on coin-cell batteries or energy harvesters, such as electronic shelf labels, retail asset tracking, process control, wearable monitoring, medical diagnostics and ECG equipment.
With annual chipset volumes reaching 450 million in 2015, the wireless sensor market is experiencing "hypergrowth" according to On World Inc's recent market study. Although this market is dominated by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee solutions, many applications require much lower power characteristics in order to operate for years on very small batteries.
This transceiver operates from 779 to 965 MHz in unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) frequency bands. It consumes only 2.8 milliamps (mA) while transmitting at -10 decibel-milliwatts (dBm) output power and a similar 2.5 mA during reception. The ZL70550 offers the industry's lowest sleep state current of 10 nanoamperes (nA), making it ideal for low-duty cycle applications. As a flexible solution that can be tailored to various application requirements, the ZL70550 operates between 1.7 volts (V) to 3.6 V and offers variable output power and data rates up to 200 kilobits per second (kbps). For applications that require extended wireless range, the transmitter output power, receiver input sensitivity and data rate can be adjusted to give a link budget up to -107 dBm while minimally increasing the power consumption of the device. The transceiver is highly integrated and available in a very small 3x2 mm chip scale package. Other than the antenna and, in some cases, its matching network, only a crystal, resistor and two coupling capacitors are required.
The device includes an advanced media access controller (MAC) that performs most link support functions, received signal strength indications (RSSI), clear channel assessment, Sniff, preamble and synchronization, packetization, whitening and forward error correction (FEC). The Microsemi optional Z-Star protocol enables rapid product development and offers a full star configuration to allow a full network to be deployed.
