Overview

TI’s royalty-free TI 15.4-Stack is a complete software platform for developing applications that require extremely low-power, long-range, reliable, robust and secure wireless star-topology based networking solutions. This chapter explains in detail the different network-configuration modes supported by the TI 15.4-Stack for application development. Useful information is presented for developers using the TI 15.4-Stack for their custom application development, which lets developers quickly understand the basics of the selected configuration mode and develop their end products with ease.

Architecture Choices

TI 15.4-Stack can be used in two separate architectures based on the end product application. Figure 11. shows the two different system architectures enabled by TI 15.4-Stack.

• A single device is shown in Figure 11. (left). The application and protocol stack are both implemented on the CC13x0 as a true single-chip solution. This configuration is the simplest and most common when using the CC13x0 for network nodes and also using the CC13x0 as a personal area network (PAN) coordinator node. This configuration is the most cost-effective technique and provides the lowest- power performance.

• A coprocessor is shown in Figure 11. (right). The protocol stack runs on the CC13x0 while the application is executed on an external MPU or MCU. The application interfaces with the CC13x0 using the network protocol interface (NPI) over a serial universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) connection. The description of the API interface is provided in the TI 15.4-Stack CoP Interface Guide document found in the docs/ti154stack folder of the SDK installation directory. This configuration is useful for applications that must add long-range wireless connectivity or peripheral applications, which execute on another device (such as an external MCU) or on a PC without the requirement to implement the complexities associated with a wireless networking protocol. In these cases, the application can be developed externally on a host processor while running TI 15.4-Stack on the CC13x0, which provides ease of development and quickly adds long-range wireless connectivity to existing products.

Figure 11. Single Device and Coprocessor Configuration

Data-Rate and PHY

The choice of PHY band and data rate can be made by setting the appropriate PHY Id in ApiMac_attribute_phyCurrentDescriptorId PIB attribute. The overall options are explained in Table 1.

Attention

When operating TI 15.4-Stack at 2.4 GHz (PHY ID 0) the data-rate is locked at the standard IEEE 802.15.4 data-rate of 250kbps. Channel count starts at channel 11 for this PHY.

Table 1. TI 15.4-Stack PHY’s and their channel frequencies

PHY ID	PHY Data Rate	Channel 0 Freq	# of Channels	Channel Spacing
0	250 kbps	2405 MHz (ch11)	16	5 MHz
1	50 kbps	902.2 MHz	129	200 KHz
3	50 kbps	863.125 MHz	64	200 KHz
128	50 kbps	433.05 MHz	7	200 KHz
129	5 kbps	902.2 MHz	129	200 KHz
130	5 kbps	433.05 MHz	7	200 KHz
131	5 kbps	863.125 MHz	64	200 KHz
132	200 kbps	902.4 MHz	64	400 KHz
133	200 kbps	863.225 MHz	32	400 KHz