Introduction

The ATA8510/ATA8515 is a state of the art, ultra-low power, Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)/Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver with an integrated AVR® microcontroller. This application note provides information about the available documentation, tools, programming environments and evaluation kits.

The ATA8510/ATA8515 transceiver is partitioned into three sections:
  • RF front end
  • Digital baseband
  • Low-power 8-bit AVR microcontroller
There are two receiver products classified into the same function categories as:
  • ATA8210
  • ATA8215
There is one transmitter product classified into the same function categories as:
  • ATA8710

The ATA8510 transceiver is designed for Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency bands in the ranges of 310 MHz to 318 MHz, 418 MHz to 477 MHz and 836 MHz to 956 MHz. The external part count is kept to a minimum due to the very high level of integration in this device. The excellent RF performance in combination with the highly sophisticated baseband signal processing is the best condition for a robust wireless communication application design.

The ATA8510 is a transceiver with a 20-Kbyte Flash memory that can be used in a standalone application. The ATA8515 version of the transceiver does not have the additional Flash memory, and requires an external host controller.

Note: All products include a 24-Kbyte ROM library with API functions. For the products without Flash memory, a standardized SPI command library is available for controlling the product.

This application note only includes the details related to the ATA8510 transceiver, but these details are applicable for all products of the ATA8510/ATA8515/ATA8210/ATA8215/ATA8710. The topics related to transmission are not applicable for the receiver products, and topics related to Flash memory programming are not applicable to the ATA8515/ATA8215 products. The receiver topics are not related for the ATA8710 product.