ATREB231FE2-EK: IEEE 802.15.4 TX-RX

The radio extender board is assembled with an Atmel AT86RF231 radio transceiver, a Skyworks SE2431L FEM and two ceramic antennas, demonstrating an increased link budget together with hardware-based antenna diversity, improving radio link robustness in harsh environments significantly.

The radio extender board was designed to interface to an Atmel microcontroller development platform. The microcontroller board in combination with the REB provides an ideal way to evaluate the outstanding radio transceiver performance, such as the excellent receiver sensitivity achieved at ultra-low current consumption; test the radio transceiver’s comprehensive hardware support of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard; and test the radio transceiver’s enhanced feature set, which includes antenna diversity, AES, high data rate modes and other functions.

The Atmel AT86RF231 antenna diversity (AD) feature supports the control of two antennas. A digital control pin is used to control an external RF switch selecting one of the two antennas. During the RX listening period, the radio transceiver switches between the two antennas autonomously, without the need for microcontroller interaction, if the AD algorithm is enabled. Once an IEEE 802.15.4 synchronization header is detected, an antenna providing sufficient signal quality is selected to receive the remaining frame. This ensures reliability and robustness, especially in harsh environments with strong multipath fading effects.