Microchip announced its first Sigfox FCC-certified RF-transceiver and connectivity development kits for Long-Range-Wide-Area-Network (LPWAN) applications. With this device and kits, Microchip will be the only company offering solutions for both the LoRa® and Sigfox markets.
The ATA8520E RF transceiver comes preprogrammed with all Sigfox- specific elements including a protocol handler, a unique ID, a Porting Authorization Code (PAC) activation key and a device-specific secret key for message encryption. The 902/905 MHz North American and 868 MHz European frequency bands are built in. The device is locked and can be easily controlled by a SPI interface and a few API commands.
The ATA8520E is based on the ATA851x transceiver UHF component with an embedded 8-bit AVR® core that offers 20 KB Flash and 1 KB SRAM. It can operate in three sub-bands in the frequency ranges of 310 to 956 MHz. The output power is up to 14.5 dBm and is programmable in 0.4 dBm steps. The typical sensitivity at 434 MHz with FSK modulation and 0.75 kbps data rate is -122.5 dBm. The ATA8520E comes in a 5 × 5 mm 32-pin QFN package.
The ATA8520-EK4-E stand-alone kit is ideal for evaluation of the Atmel ATA8520E SIGFOX compliant transceiver and operates in the European 868MHz ISM band. The kit is SIGFOX Ready™, CE certified and supports class 0 output power. The evaluation kit comes with a fully preprogrammed ATA8520E device including SIGFOX ID & PAC code for registration in the SIGFOX backend and an antenna to be connected to the SMA connector. The ATA8520-EK4-E kit need an external power supply or the ATBATTERY-CASE-2AAA from Atmel.
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Business Model |
Public network service sell (subscription) |
Private or public network, |
Coverage |
All continents and countries. “Free roaming” |
Local or country wide deployments |
Topology |
Ultra-Narrow-Band (UNB) and |
Chirp-Spread-Spectrum (CSS) proprietary radio technology |
Frequency bands |
Free ISM bands, ETSI & FCC: North America: 902/905 MHz (RCZ2) Other regions to be available in the future |
Free ISM bands, ETSI & FCC: EU: 868 MHz/433 MHz North America: 902-928 MHz China: 779-787 MHz |
Infrastructure Cost |
Base stations installed and operated by Sigfox or Sigfox-Network- Operators (SNO) partners Cellphone concept Data provided in Sigfox cloud |
Part of the system cost. Gateways have to be installed for private networks |
Device Ecosystem |
Open and large partner ecosystem |
Semtech |
Microchip content |
Single-chip solution: µC with TRX |
MCU + Semtech radio module (above combined) |
To receive even more information like technical data sheets or price information please contact an Ineltek office within your area or contact us at info@ineltek.com.