UBEC uz2400 Transceiver and Microchip’s Free ZigBee Protocol Stack

In mid September 2005, Microchip announced its free ZigBee Protocol Stack now supports the Uniband Electronic Corporation (UBEC) uz2400 ZigBee/IEEE802.15.4 2.4GHz RF transceiver. ZigBee is protocol for wirelessly networked control and monitoring applications. The primary advantages this protocol are: low cost, low power and mesh networking capabilities. Wireless network developer will be able to utilize Microchip’s ZigBee Stack with the uz2400 transceiver (UBEC) or CC2420 transceiver (Chipcon ), with no license cost.

The single chip UBEC uz2400 integrates:

• Wireless RF transceiver (2.4 GHz)
• PHY baseband
• MAC layer

UBEC Uz2400 can be used with a simple microprocessor such as PIC, AVR and 8051 to build low rate wireless applications such as consumer electronics, home automation, PC peripherals, industrial automation, toys and gamming.

UBEC uz2400 Implementation Block Diagram

UBEC uz2400RF/Analog Features

• IEEE 802.15.4 spec compliant
• ISM band 2.4~2.5 GHz
• 0 dBm maximum input level, –95 dBm sensitivity, 31 dB TX power control range, 0 dBm output power
• Integrated frequency synthesizer including VCO and loop filter
• Integrated 20 MHz and 100 kHz real-time clock circuit
• Differential RF input and output
• Digital VCO and filter calibration
• 20 MHz reference clock output
• High receiver and RSSI dynamic range
• Integrated 8 bit ADC and dual 4 bit DACs
• Support power save mode
• 5 uA at sleep mode
• Small 40-pin leadless QFN 6×6 mm2 package

UBEC MAC/Baseband Features:

• IEEE 802.15.4 spec compliant
• Hardware CSMA-CA Mechanism, automatic ACK response and FCS check
• Simple four-wire serial interface
• Independent beacon, transmit and GTS FIFO
• Support all CCA modes
• Hardware security engine(AES-128) with CTR, CCM and CBC-MAC modes
• Support RSSI/LQI

For design and development with ZigBee protocol, Microchip offers the PICDEM Z Demonstration Kit, a development platform for ZigBee application development. PICDEM Z platform provides hardware and a free ZigBee protocol stack that can be easily integrated into wireless products. The PICDEM Z is based on PIC18 microcontroller family. It offers 16 Kbytes to 128 Kbytes of Flash program memory. Microchip’s ZigBee stack size is very small,  so it can fit into a 16 Kbyte microcontroller program memory.

Microchip offers more than 63 PIC18 8-bit microcontrollers that support the ZigBee stack and incorporate nanoWatt technology power-managed modes and self-programmable Flash program memory.

Microchip’s ZigBee Stack is available (for free) on Microchip’s Web site.

The PICDEM Z Demonstration Board price is $199.

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Source: ZigBee - Microchip and UBEC’s ZigBee/IEEE802.15.4 RF transceiver