ATMEL’s AVR Z-Link provides an industry-leading 2.4GHz transceiver with up to 2.8 times the range of the competition. With -100dBm receive sensitivity, and 3dBm transmit power, the RF230 radio, provides the highest link budget of any 802.15.4 radio on the market today.
Superior line-of-sight range, and a radio requiring only six external components, gives an edge in terms of both cost and flexibility.
Atmel, represented by Soanar , provides an IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, free of charge, while more complex system solutions are available from partners. Atmel’s IEEE 802.15.4 software MAC comes as a library plus header file ready to compile for WinAVR (GCC) and IAR C-compiler.
The WinAVR compiler can be integrated in Atmel’s AVR Studio development suite, providing a free of charge starting point for a wireless application.
The software MAC is fully compliant with IEEE 802.15.4 and ensures minimum code size with maximum flexibility through its co-operative scheduling. Co-operative scheduling enables the main application to control the MAC through function calls and does not require an RTOS.
AVR Z-Link dedicated tools
The ATAVRRZ502 RF accessory kit enables point-to-point links development, debugging, and demonstration. More advanced network topologies can be developed by adding additional RF accessory kits.
The ATAVRRZ200 demonstration kit enables development, debugging, and demonstration on 802.15.4/ZigBee networks. The kit contains five 802.15.4 compatible 2.4GHz radio-controller boards (RCB) with AT86RF230 radio and ATmega1281V microcontroller.