1.5.4 G3 Sniffer

G3 Sniffer is a service of the Microchip G3 FW Stack that uses the PHY layer to provide received PLC or RF traffic from the G3 network. The USI is able to serialize and treat this service independently. This serialization can be directly provided to Microchip PLC PC Tools to be analyzed or saved for later use.

The following figures show the USI frame format of the sniffer frames. In this protocol case the field MESSAGE DATA that appears in the USI general frame format (See Figure 1-2) is divided into two fields: HEADER (32 bytes) and PDU SNIFFER MSG.

Figure 1-12. G3 Sniffer USI Frame Format
Figure 1-13. G3 Sniffer USI Frame Header Field
Sniffer frames contain the PDU received (MAC encapsulation following G3 specification) and some extra information related to the PHY layer, which is included in the header part as given below:
  • FRA T: PDU type of the received frame for G3. Currently 0x00
  • SNIF F: Sniffer frame version (0x2)
  • SNIF T: Sniffer type version: 0x12 for ATPL360 and 0x14 for RF215
  • MODUL:
    • PLC: Modulation type (high) and scheme (low) of the received frame, see modulation values in the atpl360_comm.h file
    • RF: Modulation Scheme of the received frame, see modulation values in the rf215_sniffer_if_g3.c file
  • TONEMAP:
    • PLC: 3 bytes for the TONE-MAP
    • RF: First byte corresponds with the Modulation Type depending on the RF configuration and second byte corresponds with FCS Correction flag, see modulation values in the rf215_sniffer_if_g3.c file
  • SYM PDU: Length of the PDU in PHY symbols
  • SNR: G3 defined measurement of the SNR (LQI). No sense on RF
  • DEL-T: Delimiter type. No sense on RF
  • Time Start/Time End: High precision internal counter to measure length (time) of the PDUs in microseconds in the PL360 platform
  • RSSI: Average RSSI in dBuV
  • AGC: Automatic Gain Control (AGC) Factor, no sense on RF
  • PDU LEN: Length of the PDU in bytes