Introduction
The highly integrated ATA8510 product family offers a wide range of features for individual application designs. This high-level flexibility enables designers (application design) to implement solutions that seem difficult to achieve during the initial review. It is essential to understand the device’s features and internal signal flows to optimize the application design. This application note describes an easy-to-implement method for performing range testing using the ATA8510 product family.
The user can calculate the achievable range using the free space path loss equation. However, theory often differs from real-world conditions. Therefore, conducting range testing helps to verify the achievable range under real-world conditions.
To set up such a test, the user can configure the ATA8510 in a few basic steps. The setup focuses on using the highly integrated ATA8510 family transceiver from Microchip at both the receiver and transmitter sites.
This application note provides:
- A basic range test concept using two Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) nodes (transmitter and receiver)
- Hardware setup guidance using the ATA8510-EK1 platform
- Programming options (MPLAB® X IDE or ATA UHF evaluation GUI tool)
- A configuration summary and debug hints
- Example range test results