Date: 17/04/2012

Atmel introduces 2.4GHz RF transceiver for wireless PAN applications

Atmel Corporation has released a new RF transceiver AT86RF233 for battery-operated wireless applications. This transceiver is optimized for industrial and consumer products that comply with ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4, IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) and high data rate 2.4GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band applications.

The AT86RF233 provides transceiver current consumption of 14mA, receiver current consumption of 6mA and sleep current consumption of 0.02uA. For a complete solution, design engineers can use Atmel AVR or an Atmel ARM processor-based microcontroller as a companion chip.

"With the 802.15.4-compliant market growing quickly towards half a billion units*, we're d to deliver a RF transceiver that meets a variety of industry standards while addressing our customers' requirements for increasingly lower power consumption," said Magnus Pedersen, product marketing director for microcontroller wireless solutions at Atmel. "The AT86RF233 transceiver will enable our customers to create feature-rich wireless products that provide the long battery life that their customers demand."

"Wireless applications continue to integrate more functions while demanding longer battery life and better scalability. By using Atmel's unique picoPower low-power technology, the latest AVR XMEGA devices have 20x lower sleep current than existing solutions in the market with similar memory and integration levels. AVR XMEGA devices and the AT86RF233 transceiver are the perfect companions for low-power wireless applications," said Ingar Fredriksen, senior director, MCU marketing at Atmel.

Designers can pair the transceiver with an AVR XMEGA MCU and their design environment with Atmel Studio 6.

The AT86RF233 transceiver is available with the REB233SMAD-EK evaluation kit, which includes two AT86RF233 radio evaluation boards paired with the AVR XMEGA ATxmega256A3 MCU.