Freescale intros ultra-low-power smart radio for wirelessly connected metering and medical apps

Metering Billings/CRM Europe 2011, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: Freescale Semiconductor is expanding its broad portfolio of wireless connectivity solutions with the new ultra-low-power, sub-1 gigahertz (GHz) MC12311 smart radio. The feature-rich, cost-effective MC12311 includes software and development tool support, making it a ready-to-go wireless networking solution ideal for smart metering, medical, building and home automation applications.

Pike Research predicts 535 million smart meters will be deployed worldwide by 2015, of which approximately 50 percent of them will use wireless mesh technology. To address the needs of these growing markets, Freescale, a leading provider of 802.15.4 ZigBee wireless chipsets, has been expanding its wireless portfolio through new product introductions and partnerships to provide a broad range of solutions for standards-based and proprietary wireless connectivity. The Freescale wireless portfolio includes off-the-shelf and application-specific standard products for sub-1 GHz, 802.15.4 and ZigBee connectivity.

With the introduction of the new MC12311 radio, Freescale is expanding its wireless portfolio beyond its successful 2.4 GHz devices to include an integrated sub-1 GHz solution. The MC12311 platform combines a sub-1 GHz RF transceiver featuring high link budget and strong blocking immunity and a low-power, high-speed 8-bit HCS08 microcontroller (MCU) in a single land grid array (LGA) package, along with outstanding support in the form of multiple protocol stacks, development tools and reference designs to decrease design effort and time to market.

“Our new MC12311 smart radio offers consistent and robust RF performance as well as feature-rich flexibility to help simplify and speed our customers’ path to market,” said Bruno Baylac, director of Freescale’s Metering, Medical and Connectivity Solutions business.

The MC12311 helps designers quickly connect to the smart grid by making it easier to add wireless connectivity to many types of equipment. The device provides improved propagation and increased range for home area network (HAN) RF communication to perform the wireless last mile connection for utility meter reading. It can connect smart meters to remote displays that show consumption data and thermostats that help control energy use.

For medical applications, the MC12311 can replace cables to eliminate problems associated with wired connectivity, including cable or connector damage, as well as the potential spread of infection. Additional application examples include ultra-low-power medical sensors worn on the body, wireless building sensors that detect temperature and humidity, garage door openers and general cable/wire replacement.

Freescale and its partners provide a variety of resources, including software and development tools, to help improve design cycle time. Software and hardware enablement includes certified reference designs that simplify the design of applications that require RF connectivity, as well as complementary CodeWarrior development tools and kits that include cost-effective board combinations and features.

Several protocol stacks are available, including Simple MAC (SMAC) and a subset of the IEEE 802.15.4g standard. These are part of the Freescale BeeKit Wireless Connectivity Toolkit, a standalone software application that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) in which the user can create, modify, save and update wireless network solutions. Additionally, a wireless M-bus protocol stack that meets the requirements of the EN13757-4 communications standard is available from Freescale partner AMiHo.