TI’s new 2.4 GHz ZigBee wireless network processor simplifies ZigBee design and reduces time-to-market
(Product News, 09 May 2008 )
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) has introduced the first product from the company’s new Z-Accel family of 2.4 GHz ZigBee-certified network processors. The CC2480 provides engineers complete ZigBee functionality without having to learn the complexities of a full ZigBee stack, making it easy to integrate ZigBee into a wide variety of applications, such as home and building automation and industrial monitoring and control, with minimal development effort. The device also allows customers the flexibility to work with any host microcontroller (MCU).
Z-Accel is a comprehensive solution where TI’s ZigBee-2006 stack, Z-Stack software, runs on a ZigBee processor and the application runs on an external MCU. The CC2480 handles all the timing-critical and processing-intensive ZigBee protocol tasks, while leaving the resources of the application MCU free to handle the application. The CC2480 communicates with any MCU via an SPI or UART interface, and it can be combined, for example, with TI’s MPS430 ultra-low power MCUs.
The CC2480 targets ZigBee wireless network systems used in home and building automation, industrial monitoring and control, asset tracking, low-power wireless sensor networks, set-top boxes, remote controls, automated meter reading and medical applications.
The device supports SimpleAPI, which has only 10 API calls to learn, and features excellent radio performance, low power consumption and an automatic low-power mode in idle periods.
