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Revision: May 09, 2011
Note: This document applies to REV A of the board.
1300 NE Henley Court, Suite 3
Pullman, WA 99163
(509) 334 6306 Voice | (509) 334 6300 Fax
Doc: 502-201 page 1 of 2
Copyright Digilent, Inc. All rights reserved. Other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Overview
The PmodRF2 is an interface board for the
Microchip® MRF24J40 IEEE 802.15.4™
2.4GHz RF transceiver module. The PmodRF2
can add RF communication to any Digilent
system board.
Features include:
• IEEE 802.15-compliant RF transceiver
• supports ZigBee ®, MiWi™, MiWi P2P
and proprietary wireless networking
protocols
• ISM band 2.405-2.48GHz operation
• simple SPI communication interface
• integrated 20MHz and 32.768 oscillator
circuitry
Functional Description
The PmodRF2 provides RF support for
applications at data rates of 250kbps (IEEE
802.15) or 625kbps (Turbo mode). It is
designed for use with the Microchip
microcontroller families (PIC18, PIC24,
dsPIC33, and PIC32) and the ZigBee ®,
MiWi™, and MiWi P2P software stacks all
available for download at the Microchip
website: www.microchip.com/wireless.
Interface
The primary communications interface with the
PmodRF2 is an SPI bus on J1. The PmodRF2
is implemented as a slave device in SPI mode
(0, 0), which requires SCK to idle in a low state
and the ~CS pin to be held low during
communication. An RST pin provides the host
with an active low, asynchronous hardware
reset for the PmodRF2. The PmodRF2 also
provides a configurable polarity interrupt
(default active low) indicator pin (INT), which is
asserted by the PmodRF2 when data is
available for the host device. The INT line is
de-asserted after the INTSTAT register is read.
The SPI interface standard uses four signal
lines. These are chip select (~CS), serial data
in (SDI), serial data out (SDO), and serial clock
(SCK). These signals map to the following
signals on the MRF24J40: ~CS corresponds to
the Chip Select signal (~CS), SDI corresponds
to Serial Data Input (SDI), SDO corresponds to
Serial Data Output (SDO), and SCK
corresponds to the Serial Clock signal (SCK).
Connector J1 – SPI Communications
Pin Signal Description
1 ~CS Chip Select
2 SDI Serial Data In
3 SDO Serial Data Out
4 SCK Serial Clock
5 GND Power Supply Ground
6 VCC Power Supply (3.3V)
7 INT Interrupt Output
8 ~RST Hardware Reset
9 WAKE Hardware Wake
10 NC Not Connected
11 GND Power Supply Ground
12 VCC Power Supply (3.3V)
Interface Connector Signal Description
PmodRF2 Reference Manual
www.digilentinc.com page 2 of 2
Copyright Digilent, Inc. All rights reserved. Other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Power Supply
The PmodRF2 is designed to work with
Digilent microcontroller boards that have 12-
pin header connectors.
The PmodRF2 requires a 2.7V-3.6V supply
voltage. A 3.3V power supply voltage is
available on all Digilent system boards and is
provided as part of the 12-wire Pmod interface
standard.
Digilent system boards with Pmod interface
connectors allow jumper selection of the power
supply voltage to be provided to the Pmod.
WARNING: Ensure that the system board is
jumpered to provide 3.3V to the module before
applying power to the board.
For more information on the MRF24J40, see
the MRF24J40 datasheet at the Microchip web
site.
