Atmel introduces industry’s lowest power wireless MCU for 2.4-GHz ISM band applications
Expanding on Atmel’s existing ATmega128RFA1, the new family consists of several devices including the ATmega64RFR2, ATmega128RFR2 and ATmega256RFR2 with new memory derivatives, offering a smaller 64K to a larger 256K device.
The ATmegaRFR2 family integrates a number of industry-leading features including the lowest power using advanced hardware assist, best-in-class RF performance and additional memory options to meet today’s demanding wireless requirements. Delivering <6mA in listen mode, <14.5 mA in transmit mode and <1.5 uA in deep sleep mode, the new single-chip wireless family offers up to 50 percent lower power consumption than existing offerings on the market today including the lowest power budget solution for today’s 2.4 GHz wireless applications. The new family also offers a true 1.8 V operation at 16 MHz and a wider temperature range, up to 125°C, for deployments in more demanding environments such as wireless lighting control.
To further simplify and accelerate a wireless design, a Wireless Composer is also available through the Atmel Studio 6 Gallery, the company’s new app store featuring a growing selection of extensions and plug-ins. The Wireless Composer provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for RF performance measurements while running the ATmegaRFR2 evaluation kit.
Atmel’s ATmegaRFR2 family can be used with proprietary communication stacks and solutions compliant to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Atmel has already obtained ‘golden units status’ with the ZigBee Alliance for its new ZigBee Light Link reference implementation. The new family is also ideal for other ZigBee PRO-compliant wireless networks running the ZigBee Home Automation (ZHA), ZigBee Building Automation (ZBA), or ZigBee Smart Energy (ZSE). The Atmel ZigBee PRO and ZigBee RF4CE reference implementations can be downloaded free of charge from Atmel.
Availablity
The ATmegaRFR2 family is shipping in production quantities now.
The ATmega256RFR2 evaluation kit is also available now for $349. The evaluation kit includes two radio controller boards with an ATmega256RFR2 device and a fully functional portable wireless node, a sensor terminal board and one key remote control board enabling demo/evaluation of remote control applications.
More Information about the ATmegaRFR2 microcontroller at
www.atmel.com/products/wireless/zigbee/single-chip_solutions.aspx
More information about the composer is available at www.atmel.com/studio
