8.3.7.3.5 Radio Interface: Manchester Encoded USART Application

This section describes low data rate RF transmission systems and their integration with a Manchester encoded USART. These systems are based on transmitter and receiver ICs that support ASK and FSK modulation schemes.

The goal is to perform full-duplex radio transmission of characters using two different frequency carriers. See configuration in the following figure.

The USART peripheral is configured as a Manchester encoder/decoder. Looking at the downstream communication channel, Manchester encoded characters are serially sent to the RF transmitter. This may also include a user defined preamble and a start frame delimiter. Mostly, preamble is used in the RF receiver to distinguish between a valid data from a transmitter and signals due to noise. The Manchester stream is then modulated. See the following figure for an example of ASK modulation scheme. When a logic one is sent to the ASK modulator, the power amplifier, referred to as PA, is enabled and transmits an RF signal at downstream frequency. When a logic zero is transmitted, the RF signal is turned off. If the FSK modulator is activated, two different frequencies are used to transmit data. When a logic 1 is sent, the modulator outputs an RF signal at frequency F0 and switches to F1 if the data sent is a 0. See figure "FSK Modulator Output" below.

From the receiver side, another carrier frequency is used. The RF receiver performs a bit check operation examining demodulated data stream. If a valid pattern is detected, the receiver switches to Receiving mode. The demodulated stream is sent to the Manchester decoder. Because of bit checking inside RF IC, the data transferred to the microcontroller is reduced by a user-defined number of bits. The Manchester preamble length is to be defined in accordance with the RF IC configuration.