ST TN100 RF, User Manual, Page: 5 / 37

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UM0579 Description of the delivered package
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2 Description of the delivered package
The ST RF TN100 Evaluation kit contains the following items:
● One guarantee record card
●
Two TN100 sensor boards
● One CD-ROM including the following items:
– Application and firmware source code
– User manual
– Board schematics
– Datasheets
Please check the STMicroelectronics website www.st.com for any available updates and
downloads.
2.1 Hardware overview
Figure 2 shows the main components of the sensor boards contained in the package.
The TN100 transceiver is a highly integrated mixed signal chip that uses CSS (chirp spread
spectrum) wireless communication technology. With its unique ranging capability, the TN100
can measure the link distance between two nodes. Thus, the TN100 supports location
awareness applications including location-based services (LBS) and asset tracking (2D/3D
RTLS). Ranging is performed during regular data communication and does not require
additional infrastructure, power, and/or bandwidth. The TN100 transceiver IC is designed to
build up robust, short distance wireless networks operating in the 2.45 GHz ISM band with
extremely low power consumption over a wide range of operating temperatures.
The TN100 supports 7-frequency channels with 3 non-overlapping channels. This provides
support for multiple physically independent networks and improved coexistence
performance with existing 2.4 GHz wireless technologies. Data rates are selectable between
2 Mbps and 125 kbps. The TN100 transceiver includes a sophisticated Medium Access
Controller (MAC) with CSMA/CA and TDMA support as well as forward error correction
(FEC) and 128-bit hardware encryption. Through its high-speed standard SPI interface, the
TN100 can be interfaced with an external microcontroller. It includes a 4-kbit frame buffer so
that several receive and transmit frames can be stored simultaneously in the buffers. This
solution eliminates the problems of different peak data rates between air and microcontroller
interfaces.
ST's STM32 family of 32-bit Flash microcontrollers is based on the breakthrough ARM
Cortex™-M3 core - a core specifically developed for embedded applications. The STM32
family benefits from the Cortex-M3 architectural enhancements including the Thumb®-2
instruction set to deliver improved performance with better code density, significantly faster
response to interrupts, all combined with industry leading power consumption.