2.1 System Overview

The preceding figure shows an overview of the main functional blocks of the ATA8510/15. External control of the ATA8510/15 is performed through the SPI pins SCK, MOSI, MISO and NSS on port B. The configuration of the ATA8510/15 is stored in the EEPROM and a large portion of the functionality is defined by the firmware located in the ROM and processed by the AVR. An SPI command can trigger the AVR to configure the hardware according to settings that are stored in the EEPROM and start up a given system mode (e.g., RXMode, TXMode or PollingMode). Internal events such as “Start of Telegram” or “FIFO empty” are signaled to an external microcontroller on pin 28 (PB6/EVENT).

During the start-up of a service, the relevant part of the EEPROM content is copied to the SRAM. This allows faster access by the AVR during the subsequent processing steps and eliminates the need to write to the EEPROM during run-time because parameters can be modified directly in the SRAM. As a consequence, the user does not need to observe the EEPROM read/write cycle limitations.

It is important to note that all PWRON and NPWRON pins (PC1..5, PB4, PB7) are active in OFFMode. This means that even if the ATA8510/15 is in OFFMode and the DVCC voltage is switched off, the power management circuitry within the ATA8510/15 biases these pins with VS.

AVR ports can be used as button inputs, external LNA supply voltage (RX_ACTIVE), LED drivers, EVENT pin, switching control for additional SPDT switches, general purpose digital inputs, wake-up inputs, etc. Some functionality of these ports is already implemented in the firmware and can be activated by adequate EEPROM configurations. Other functionality is available only through custom software residing in the 20-Kbyte Flash program memory (ATA8510).