Connectivity and networking with PIC MCUs - Part 1: Protocols, IR and RF

While IR communication has some clear advantages, its need for line-of-sight communication is in many cases a significant disadvantage. Therefore, radio links are of very great interest. A low-power radio system can have local connectivity and can communicate through walls or other (non-conductive) obstructions. Yet now it is not line of sight, there is a major risk of interference between networks trying to occupy the same space. Imagine a place, say a hotel lobby, full of people with radio-enabled data communication devices.

How do we avoid the risk of massive interference between them all? This section surveys a couple of approaches used.

20.3.1 Bluetooth
A major player in the field of radio data communication is Bluetooth, which faces the challenges of data communication by radio in an interesting way. The development of Bluetooth is controlled by a group of electronics manufacturers, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group [Ref. 20.6]. It operates between 2.402 and 2.480 GHz, a band originally reserved by international agreement for industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) applications, but now also widely used for local wireless data networks.

Bluetooth provides data links between such devices as cell phones, computers, digital cameras and headphones. It has these characteristics:

• A low-power radio link – power is around 1mW whereas that of a mobile phone is 3 W.

• A typical range of 10 m.

• A data rate originally of 1 Mbps and currently (Bluetooth 2.0) of 3 Mbps.

• Up to eight devices can be linked simultaneously.

• Spread-spectrum frequency hopping is applied, with the transmitter changing frequency in a pseudo-random manner 1600 times per second.

When Bluetooth devices detect one another, they determine automatically whether they need to interact with each other, for example through data exchange. This is without any user interaction. Each device has an address, and it is by the address that it determines whether another device that it has detected is of interest to it.

Bluetooth systems in contact with each other in this way then form a piconet. Once communication is established, members of the piconet synchronise their frequency hopping, so they remain in contact. A single room could contain several piconets, each containing devices which relate to each other. Each piconet is switching together. For the occasions of momentary clash, there is software that can detect and reject the corrupted data.

There is considerable cleverness in Bluetooth, in the way it can autonomously configure a network and maintain high data rates. This does, however, make it costly and complex for the small or simple system. Therefore, we turn to look at an alternative, Zigbee. This carries some of the Bluetooth attributes, but is far simpler.

20.3.2 Zigbee
Zigbee is a recent standard, managed by members of the Zigbee Alliance [Ref. 20.7]. It gains its inspiration from Bluetooth, but aims to be simpler and cheaper, with a smaller software overhead requirement. It applies the IEEE 802.15.4 Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network standard. Like Bluetooth it operates in the ISM bands of the radio spectrum.

Zigbee is particularly appropriate for home automation, and other measurement and control systems, with the ability to use small, cheap microcontrollers. Data rates are low and power consumption minimal.

There are two Zigbee device types, the Full Function Device (FFD) and the Reduced Function Device (RFD). An FFD can pass data from other devices, so can take on a routing role. Each network must have a coordinator, and only an FFD can take on this role. An RFD has minimal memory and functionality, and can communicate with an FFD but not pass data on. The minimal power requirement of a Zigbee network is possible because an RFD node can spend most of its time in Sleep mode. They wakes up briefly, just to confirm they are still part of the network.

20.3.3 Zigbee and the PIC microcontroller
Zigbee is an interesting standard to engage with, and a natural one to apply with PIC microcontrollers. A possible physical implementation of a Zigbee node is illustrated in Figure 20.3.

The link is through a single-chip radio transceiver, such as the Chipcon (now acquired by Texas Instruments) CC2420 [Ref. 20.8]. A microcontroller interfaces to this through an SPI link and certain control lines. Microchip has produced extensive firmware which can be adapted to apply the protocol. An example, described in Ref. 20.9, allows a Zigbee Coordinator or RFD to be implemented. Figure 20.4 shows a Derbot implementation of the Zigbee protocol, making use of a Microchip demo card.

Coming up in Part 2: Controller Area Network and Local Interconnect Network.

Printed with permission from Newnes, a division of Elsevier. Copyright 2006. "Designing Embedded Systems with PIC Microcontrollers" by Tim Wilmshurst. For more information about this title and other similar books, please visit www.elsevierdirect.com.

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