Dresden Elektronik Radio Modules
Hardware
The hardware used Dresden Elektronik radio communication platform described on this page consists of three types of components:
- Radio/microcontroller modules
- Development boards (can also be replaced with a custom board)
- Sniffer (for analyzing communication between the nodes)
Radio/microcontroller modules
The Dresden Elektronik radio/MCU modules are small modules consisting of a AVR or ARM based microcontroller with integrated radio. List of all available modules can be seen here.
As of July 2015, three types of Dresden Elektronik Radio/microcontroller modules were available in the institute:
- deRFmega128
- deRFmega256
- deRFarm
| deRFmega128 | deRFmega256 | deRFarm | |
| Chip | ATmega128RFA1 | ATmega256RFR2 | AT91SAM7X512 |
| Datasheet | Link | Link | Link |
| Platform | AVR | AVR | ARM |
| MCU bit width | 8-bit | 8-bit | 32-bit |
| Flash size | 128 kb | 256 kb | 512 kb |
| SRAM size | 16 kb | 32 kb | 128 kb |
| Operating frequency | 16 MHz | 16 MHz | 48 MHz |
| Voltage range | 1.8 - 3.6 V | 1.8 - 3.6 V | 1.8 - 3.6 V |
| Radio transceiver | Integrated | Integrated | AT86RF231 |
| Radio frequency | 2.4 GHz | 2.4 GHz | 2.4 GHz |
| Interfaces | JTAG, UART, I2C, ADC, SPI, GPIO | JTAG, UART, I2C, ADC, SPI, GPIO | JTAG, DBGU, I2C, SPI, UART, USB, RMII, GPIO, ADC |
| Power consumption (TX) | 18 mA | 18 mA | 45 mA |
| Power consumption (RX) | 16 mA | 16 mA | 45 mA |
| Power consumption (Sleep) | < 1 µA | < 1 µA | < 250 µA |
The 2.4 GHz transceiver that is used in all the modules supports the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC standard. The IEEE 802.15.4 MAC standard has support for additional network layers like 6LoWPAN and ZigBee (It should be noted, that although the ZigBee protocol is theoretically supported by the standard, it is not supported by the Dresden Elektronik communication stack).
