09.06.2008 – 14:36

Atmel Corporation

Atmel Introduces 800/900 MHz IEEE 802.15.4 Compliant Transceiver for ZigBee

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire)

- The radio chip enables long range, low power, wireless
connectivity for IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today the
availability of the AT86RF212 800/900 MHz IEEE 802.15.4(TM) RF
transceiver for low power wireless applications, including ZigBee(R).

The AT86RF212 offers an industry best RF performance with a link
budget of up to 120 dB in the 800 MHz and 900 MHz ISM bands available
in Europe and North America, respectively. The link budget is the
result of the -110 dBm sensitivity offered by the device and the
maximum output power of +10 dBm. The extremely high link budget
combined with the reduced path loss in the 800/900 MHz enables long
range wireless communication without the use of costly external LNA
or PA.

Designing products with the AT86RF212 chipset enables battery
operated devices to run for many years on a single battery because of
the AT86RF212's low current consumption in both active and in sleep
mode. The current consumption in receive mode is 9 mA and the
consumption in transmit is 17 mA at a power output level of 5 dBm.
The sleep mode current consumption is down to 0.2 uA.

"Selecting a 800/900 MHz radio chip for your wireless
applications gives you a range benefit of nearly 3 times compared to
a 2.4 GHz device due to the reduced path loss on the lower
frequencies," said Magnus Pedersen, Director of Wireless MCU Product
Marketing at Atmel. "Adding the benefit of the extremely high link
budget of the AT86RF212, the device outperforms most solutions
available in the industry today by as much as 10 times the range.
This has been confirmed by initial range tests performed by our
partner MeshNetics, showing an outdoor range of about 6 km without
the use of any external LNA's or PA's," he added.

"Atmel is our long-standing silicon partner, and we are pleased
to pair their best-in-class AT86RF212 transceiver with our BitCloud
ZigBee PRO Feature Set software on our ZigBit 900 RF module for sub-1
GHz band," said Alexey Rybakov, Managing Director of MeshNetics'
ZigBit Business Unit. "MeshNetics is a ZigBee House that offers
easy-to-integrate RF modules, ZigBee software and engineering
services for OEMs and system integrators. By using the
industry-leading silicon from Atmel, we can offer our customers high
quality ZigBee modules and development tools."

To support the wide range of wireless applications requested by
the market, AT86RF212 handles multiple data rates. The 20/40 Kbit/s
and 100/250 Kbit/s supported by the device is compliant to IEEE
802.15.4-2006. High speed data rates such as 200/400/1000 Kbit/s are
also supported enabling wireless applications demanding more
bandwidth.

Security is handled by an AES 128-bit onboard hardware engine.
The security engine improves the overall system power efficiency and
timing. The stand-alone 128-bit AES engine can be accessed in
parallel to all PHY operational transactions and states using the SPI
interface. Atmel wireless solution is made of radio devices and
microcontrollers such as AVR(R) offering the best-in-class
combination of performance and low power consumption required for
such applications. A set of firmware and applications notes has been
prepared for AT86RF212 to shorten time to market for the Atmel
customers. This includes low-level drivers for simple wireless
applications, IEEE 802.15.4 MAC for standard compliant solutions as
well as solutions for ZigBee. Updated firmware and documentation are
available from the web pages of Atmel and partners.

Availability and Pricing

Samples of the new AT86RF212 are available now in Pb-free QFN32
packages, measuring only 5mm x 5 mm. Pricing starts at US $3.21 in
10k-piece quantities.

    Footnote
    LNA = Low Noise Amplifier
    PA = Power AmplifierIEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics
    Engineers
    AES = Advanced Encryption Standard
    SPI = Serial Peripheral Interface
    PHY = Physical medium
    ZigBee = Low Power Wireless communication protocols defined by the ZigBee
    Alliance

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory
and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's
broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is
able to provide the electronics industry with complete system
solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications,
computing and automotive markets.

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), logo
and combinations thereof, AVR(R) and others, are registered
trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

    Information:
    Detailed information about AT86RF212 can be retrieved at:
    http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?PN=AT86RF212
    Product information on Atmel's AVR can be retrieved at
    http://www.atmel.com/avr
    Press Contacts:
    Philippe Faure, Marketing Communications Director - Microcontrollers
    Tel: +33-2-40-18-18-87, Email:  philippe.faure@atmel.com
    Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
    Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email:  hperlegos@atmel.com

Web site: http://www.atmel.com/avr

Contact:

Philippe Faure, Marketing Communications Director - Microcontrollers,
+33-2-40-18-18-87, philippe.faure@atmel.com, or Helen Perlegos,
Public Relations, +1-408-487-2963, hperlegos@atmel.com, both of Atmel
Corporation