Bidirectional RF
communications works like very short range (10 to 15 cm) radio but is
as easy as IR. This material formed the
basis of an article that was first published in the February, 2005
issue of Circuit Cellar magazine. A more recent term for this kind
of RF link is "Near Field Communications".
Downloads -Down load the driver code.
Download
the driver for the AMega8 (easily modified for any AVR with RAM)
vlfcwm8.inc
Download the driver for the AT90S2313 (easily modified for any AVR
with RAM)
vlfcw2313.inc
Scroll to the bottom of the page to see a list of related projects.
Photo 1. A battery operated
frequency meter (front), needs only to be placed near the base (rear)
in order for them to communicate via the bidirectional Minimum Mass
Link (as indicated by the illuminated Activity LEDs). A terminal
emulation program allow control of display of results from the
frequency meter without the need of physically connecting the two of
them.
Here's a way to get a short range bidirectional RF (Radio Frequency)
channel on a microcontroller, using the controller's tristatable I/O
pins and on-chip comparator with a few passive components. The range
with the firmware and simple I came up with for Atmel AVR controllers
allows for low error rate communications over 10 to 15 cm using a 5.5
cm diameter loop antenna on each device. This is the answer to my
search for the simplest and lowest cost way to connect instruments on
my bench top to my computer and to each other without wires. Its an
alternative to short-range infrared; except no need to make sure there
is a good optical path between the units. I presently use this system
for communications among a wireless alphanumeric 2 line X 16 character
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), a battery operated frequency meter, a
four channel 10 bit voltmeter, and a base unit that connects my
computer's RS-232 port to the RF channel. These projects are described
on other pages on this site. This RF Link also adheres to
the "Minimum Mass" product design concept - not using any thing that is
not absolutely essential to obtaining the needed function.
The Minimum Mass RF Link makes use on a microcontroller's on-chip
analog comparator connected to a loop antenna and a pair of bias
resistors as a receiver and uses a tristateable output on one of the
comparator pins to drive the same loop antenna as a transmitter. I have
written code modules for the AT90S2131 and the ATMega 8. The code is
fairly small - only 131 bytes for the ATMega8 version, and for hardware
resources, it only uses an 8 bit time and the comparator. Though
I have only tried this on AVR controllers, I suspect this technique
would work well on other controllers, such as the PIC family, equipped
with comparitors.
The
Basic
Method
To get the signal from one place to another, place two coils facing
each other within 10 to 15 cm of one-another (See Figure 1) . Drive one
with a square wave signal and a voltage will show up across the other
because of the magnetic coupling between the two of them. Now make them
tuned circuits and the signal changes to a sine wave, and it grows in
amplitude in the transmitter, and the receiver becomes more sensitive.
Figure 1. Drive a resonant
loop antenna with a signal at the resonant frequency, and an AC voltage
at the same frequency will be induced in a second, nearby resonant loop
antenna.
Since these coils, which are actually resonant loop antennas, rely on
magnetic coupling, they can be shielded. This is useful for reducing
electrically coupled interference in the receiving mode and is also
useful to prevent the microcontroller's clock from "leaking out"
if you have to meet regulatory requirements for incidental radiation.
The signal is serial data modulated onto a 181.818 kHz carrier with
on-off keying. The frequency is in the 160 to 190 kHz band, where legal
and technical requirements are relaxed, at least in the U.S. and
Canada. The number, 181.818181 KHz results from dividing the
microcontroller's 4 Mhz clock by 22 -something that's done is firmware.
The baud rate is 1200 baud, and its set by a timer interrupt.
The
circuit
Figure 2. Conceptual
illustration of the use of the tristateable I/O pin and the
transmit/receiver circuit. Pin 12 switches between input and output
states. Pin numbers relate to the AT90S2313 DIP package.
A pair of resistors biases the resonant antenna at 1/2 the supply
voltage (See Figure 2). This is the sweet spot of the comparator's
common mode input range, where the input offset voltage is likely to be
minimum, which result in the greatest receiver sensitivity. This is
also nice for the transmit mode, when sending the 181.818 Khz carrier
because the 0 to VCC swing on the output pin results in pleasingly
symmetrical drive to the coil. The values of the resistors have little
effect on receiver performance, but set the maximum drive current in
the transmit mode.
In the base unit, which is AC powered and battery life is not an
issue,
the resistors are 220 Ohms each, which permits up to 23 milliamps peak
current from pin 12, to give a little extra "kick" to the
transmitter. In the frequency meter, which is battery powered,
the divider is made from 1K resistors and gets its power from an output
port so it can be switched off to save power when the controller goes
to sleep after a period of not being used.
Transmitting
Figure 3. The transmitter
sends on-off keyed serial data on a 181.818 Khz carrier.
The transmit firmware routine shifts the byte to be transmitted a bit
at a time, similar to the way a firmware UART works, shift one bit
every 833 microseconds (1/1200 baud). If the bit being sent is a zero,
the tristatable pin connected to the resonant loop antenna (pin 12 in
Figure 2) remains as an input and the microcontroller set an 8 bit time
to time out in one bit period, at which time the controller returns to
shifting out bits without sending the carrier.
If the bit being sent is a one, the tristatable pin connected
to
the resonant loop (pin 12 in Figure 2) is set to an output, the
controller sets an interrupt timer to interrupt it after one bit period
has passed, and enters a firmware timing loop that generates 181.818
Khz square waves on the tristatable pin, thus transmitting a carrier
for one bit time. This is shown conceptually in Figure 3.
When sending a byte, a logic one start bit is sent (an 833
microsecond
burst of carrier) first, followed by 8 data bits least significant bit
first, and two stop bits which are logic zero (no carrier).
Getting a clean carrier out of the microcontroller while timing one bit
period requires that the 8 bit timer and its interrupt be used so
processor only spends time generating the carrier.
In pseudo code, here is the routine that generates the 181.818 kHz
carrier:
forever:
;Make 181.818 kHz square waves on
output pin.
set output bit high
delay
set output bit low
delay
jump to forever
The 181.818 kHz carrier routine above is called as a subroutine after
setting the 8 bit timer to interrupt it after one bit time. The
corresponding interrupt routine that is executed after the
carrier is sent for one bit time is a very short one.
timer0service:
pop
r18 ;Pop interrupt return address
pop
r18
reti
;Return from interrupt
The pop instructions reposition the stack pointer so that when the
return from interrupt instruction is executed, it returns to the
routine that called the 181.818 kHz carrier generation routine. A
similar method is used when sending a logic 0, except then no signal is
generated on the output pin.
Receiving
Figure 4. The receiver counts the number of times the waveform across
the resonant loop exceeds the comparator threshold within a 1/4 bit
period in order to determine whether a carrier is present or not.
The receiver is a lot like a sensitive frequency meter connected to a
resonant loop antenna. While the receive routine is checking for
a logic 1 (the presence of a carrier), comparator interrupts are
enabled, and an 8 bit timer is set to interrupt the routine that checks
for the presence of a carrier 1/4 bit time later. Thus, after the 1/4
bit time interrupt, the register containing the bit count is a measure
of the frequency of the signal received by the resonant loop antenna.
If the corresponds to 181.818 kHz within preset limits, then the
firmware considers the carrier to be present, and that the transmitter
is send a logic 1. If the comparator interrupt count is too low, the
assumption is that there is no carrier present. If the count is too
high the assumption is that the interrupt source is noise or an
interfering signal.
This is a very rudimentary means of determining the presence of the
carrier, and leaves the receiver open to treating noise as a signal. In
my applications, I am involved in the process of interpreting the data,
for example on an alphanumeric LCD display, so if the characters are
garbage, its pretty obvious. If I were to use this for some sort of
automatic control, for example, opening a door lock, a complex code of
several bytes and either redundant transmission or a CRC (Cyclic
Redundancy Check) would be needed to reduce mistakes. But for reading a
frequency meter simply sending the ASCII codes is fine.
Decoding the string of carrier bursts, converted to ones and zeros by
the carrier detection routines is done in a manner similar to a
firmware UART - the firmware looks for a start bit, and if one is
detected, it waits until the center of the following bit, and then
samples each bit and shifts it into a byte wide register.
About
Antennas
Half the external components in the minimum configuration are part
of
the resonant loop antenna, and the antenna's design dominates the
transmitter strength and the receiver sensitivity.
The antenna is fundamentally a parallel resonant LC circuit tuned to
the carrier frequency. Usually, I pick a capacitor with a practical
impedance at the carrier frequency and then calculate the inductance
needed to resonate with it. The formula for finding the target
inductance is
, where L is
the target inductance in henries,
is the constant 3.14..., F is
the carrier freqeuency in Hz, and C is the resonating capaacitor in
farads.
I’ve used .033 uf capacitors in all the unitls I have built, and this
resonates witih 23 microhenries.
here are several formuale availble for calculating the number of
turns
to use in a coil once you decide how much space you have for it, but I
haven’t found one that seems to get real close. What I do, is wind a
coil of about the number of turns I expect to need, and then
measure it. Since inductance is proportional to the square of the
number of turns in a coil, I calculate an inductance factor for that
size coil, and then I use that inductance factor to calculate the
number of turns I will need. If I am careful, this goes pretty simply.
Inductance factor,
where K is
the inductance factor, L is the inductance in Henries, and N is the
number of turns in the coil. To find the the number of turns for a
target inductance find N, where
. For
the 5.5 cm loop, the constant came out as 1.11e-7 and the number of
turns to get 23 microhenries came out to be 14.3 turns, so I just wount
14 turns and the measured inductance is 21.8 microhenries.
The antenna's operation in transmit mode is analogous to its
operation
in the receive mode, so let's take the receive mode first. The better
the receiving antenna, the larger the signal appearing across it, and a
lot of factors affect the amplitude. Looking at how these factors
relate to one another (See Formula 1) can be useful in understanding
how to optimize the design for a particular application. At first
glance the formula may look a little intimidating, but all it really
means is that the higher the carrier frequency, the more turns on the
antenna, the higher the antenna's Q, the larger the antenna's diameter,
and the stronger the RF magnetic field received by the antenna, the
larger the signal at its output - larger signals on the output
correspond to greater sensitivity.
Besides the received signal strength, sensitivity increases as linear
function of the carrier frequency, the number of turns and the physical
size of the loop and the Q (Quality factor) of the antenna.
V = K F N Q A B cos(alpha), where
V is the voltage across teh antenna coil in volts,
K is a constant for the antenna,
F is the carrier frequency in Hertz,
N is the number of turns in the loop,
Q is the quality factor fo the tuned circuit (the ratio of XL to R),
A is the effective area of the antenna in meters,
B is teh strength of the magnetic field fluctions at the antenna, and
alpha is the angle fo the receiving antenna with repect to that of
the
transmitter.
Formula 1. This is
simplified
expression that shows the major factors that affect signal amplitude at
the input to the receiver.
In the case of this application, the upper frequency limit is set by
the response of the controllers' on-chip comparator and the speed at
which controller can process the incoming interrupts. The presence of
the 160 kHz to 190 kHz license free band in the U.S. made 181.818 kHz
very attractive since it is within the controller's range.
Antenna size, or effective area is one of the easier factors to
control. The initial prototype and some of the battery operated devices
I've built use 5.5 cm diameter circular air core loops because this is
a convenient size and they are easy to make. In the RS-232 base unit,
where space was not such an issue, I used a larger square air core loop
that took up most of the available space to extend the range a little
bit.
Photo 2.
The antenna for the base unit is the largest I could neatly fit around
the outer edge of the circuit board.
In another application, where space is a premium, I retrofitted an
RS-232 LCD display board (See Photo 3) with the receiver circuit (only
a coil, capacitor and two resistors + the firmware modifications). To
get by with a small antenna footprint on the circuit board, I
wound the coil on a 30 cm ferrite rod. This particular coil is made of
29 turns of #30 wire on a 3 cm ferrite rod. The main advantage of the
ferrite rod is that its effective area is much larger than its physical
size (A in formula 1 is larger for a given circuit board footprint).
Photo 3. The wireless 2 line x 16 character display uses a small
ferrite rod antenna, on the top edge of the circuit board, just above
the TO-220 voltage regulator, to make it compact. Smaller sizes are
possible, but as the antenna gets smaller, positioning with respect to
the transmitter becomes more critical.
Another thing ferrite rods can do is raise the Q of the circuit,
provided you use a ferrite with suitably low losses at the carrier
frequency. A resonant circuit’s Q, which means “Quality factor” is the
ratio of its reactance of its coil and capacitor to circuit resistance
and is a fundamental measure of how well the circuit reuses energy
stored in the
reactive components from cycle-to-cycle. For the Minimum Mass RF Link
receiver, increasing a circuit’s Q increase the sensitivity, but at the
expense of bandwidth. For the transmitter, increasing Q increases the
amount of current in the antenna, and thus the strength of the
radiation.
Although calculating Q is straightforward if the circuit resistances
are known, high frequency losses including skin effect, and the loading
effects of associated circuitry, calculating Q can give results
that are off by a factor of two or more.
For the prototype coil design, 14 turns of #30 enameled copper wire
were wound on a 5.5 centimeter air core, which gives 21.8 micro henries.
Based on this data, Q was calculated with the formula: Q = XL/R
(Formula 2) , where XL is the reactance of the coil, XL = 2 pi f L, (pi
is the constant 3.14..., f is the resonant frequency, and L is the coil
inductance in micro henries. The calculated Q was 32. But in real life,
Q is much lower because of such circuit losses as skin effect, and eddy
currents induced in adjacent windings.
To test a physical antenna, I measured the Q of a 5.5 cm prototype
coils and its resonating capacitor by pulsing a low voltage across it
with a field effect transistor and then time constant of the decay of
the envelope, then calculated the effective Q.
The Q of the circuit is found by the formula: Q = pi f t (Formula 3)
Where pi and f are the same as in Formula 2, and t is the time it
takes
the envelope of the ringing to decay by 38%. See Photo 4.
Photo 4. It took 6
half-cycles, or about 16.2 microseconds for the envelope to decay 38%.
Plugging the time constant into formula 3 gives a Q of only 9 at 182
kHz. About a third of what I estimated based on resistance. This is not
bad news. The 3 db bandwidth of a resonant circuit can be found by BW =
Q/f (Formula 4), so in this case, the 3 db bandwidth would then be 182
kHz/9 = 20 kHz. Good - it means that the antennas can sloppy and still
work.
As an example of what you can get away with, the 5.5 cm loop antenna
in
the frequency meter lays over the battery pack (See Photo 5). I'm sure
it lowers the Q of the antenna, but range to the base unit antenna or
to that of the alphanumeric LCD is more than adequate.
Photo
5. A look at the
guts of the battery operated frequency meter. The antenna is merely 14
turns of #30 wire held in place with clear plastic tape.
Firmware
Usage
The firmware specific to the Minimum Mass Wireless Coupler is
contained in an assembler include file. The incude file contains
detailed instructions for its use and an application example. I have
written include files for the Atmel AT90S2313 and the ATmega8, both
operating at 4 Mhz. The include files only references one register by
name, RFChar, the register by which the incoming and outgoing byte are
transferrer, and the rest are referenced directly by register name, so
that during assembly, there won't be any "Register Already Defined"
warning messages resulting from use of some registers by both the main
program and the include file. The Minimum Mass Wireless Coupler
routines save the status register and the contents of all working
registers they use except RFChar. When returning to the calling
program, the status register and all working registers except RFChar
are restored.
The main program needs to take care of some housekeeping, such as
assigning the variable RFChar, assigning I/O for the transmit pin
(which could be separate from the receive pin if you want to use
separate antennas or a more complicated circuit with, for example, a
high power output stage or receive pre amp), the Activity LED, the pins
associated with analog comparator input 0, and a pin to switch power to
the bias resistors.
There are four callable subroutines in the include file.
SendRFByte is a subroutine that sends the contents of RFChar via
the Minimum Mass Wireless Coupler.
The subroutine, ReceiveRFByte, waits for start bit on RF channel for
63.75 bit times. If a start bit is found, the entire incoming byte is
received and placed in RFChar and the carry bit is set. If a start bit
is not found. the routine returns with the carry bit clear. This allows
polling for incoming data without the receiver getting hung up.
As an example,
getchar:
rcall ReceiveRFByte ;Wait for character to be
received
brcc
getchar ;If carry bit is
clear, go back and wait some more.
Since switching from transmitting to receiving requires a little time
for the analog components to settle, some delays routines are
necessary. The subroutines that these delays are PostXmitDelay and
PostRCVDelay. PostXmitDelay is called when switching from
transmitting data to receiving data and PostRCVDelay is called when
switching from receiving data to transmitting, and its purpose is to
wait for the unit on the other end to become ready to receive.
Here is a short program that uses all of the callable routines
correctly. I have used this program many times while testing pieces of
the Minimum Mass Wireless Coupler. It receives a character over the
Coupler and echoes it back to the sender.
EchoTest:
rcall
ReceiveRFByte ;Wait for a character to be received.
brcc
EchoTest ;If nothing
received, go back and check again.
rcall
PostRCVDelay ;Wait for far end transceiver to
recover.
rcall
SendRFByte ;Echo character to far
end.
rcall
PostXmitDelay ;Wait local transceiver to
recover.
rjmp
EchoTest ;Go back to
top and get another character.
While a character is being transmitter or received, the pin associated
with the activity LED goes high.
Here are links to some projects on this site that use the Minimum Mass
Wireless Coupler.
Terminal
Interface with Minimum
Mass Wireless Coupler
Scanning
Voltmeter with Minimum
Mass Wireless Coupler
Frequency
Meter with Minimum
Mass
Wireless
Coupler
LCD Display with Minimum
Mass
Wireless Coupler
Tiny
Tuned Loop
Antennas for the Minimum Mass Wireless Coupler
External link:
Two students at Cornell University incorporated some of these concepts
in their school project. The project as posted at the university
website is very complete and very well written.
A
Remote Controlled DMM With Minimum Mass Wireless Coupler
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