Research On The Application Of Freescale ZigBee-MC13233 Microcontroller

MC13233 is a new dedicated microcontroller recommended by Freescale Company to meet the special requirements of the sensor network about Consumer Electronics and Smart Home. It will be available in June 2011. MC13233 is really an ideal ZigBee microcontroller for Consumer Electronics and Smart Home which inherites all the advantages of the previous Freescale ZigBee microcontrollers, such as low cost, lost power, bi-directional transmission and high reliability and so on. Besides, a DMA controller is added to the PHY layer in order to improve the efficiency of data transmission and reception and increased infrared driver module and security module make the product using the microcontroller more universal and confidential. As MC13233 has not yet formally put into the business, there are lack of hardware evaluation system, drivers and application samples about it. Commissioned by Freescale Company, Freescale Embedded R&D Center of Soochow University takes an early research on the application of this microcontroller.The author of this paper was in charge of the work, and made some in-depth studies, and discussions and practices on the MC13233 application development methods. Based on the application research of MC13233, the author proposed the hardware ans software design about a wireless node named SD-Z33N using MC13233 as a core according to the embedded system component design principles, and did lots of work on the implementation methods, the principle of hardware rendering, the circuit layout, drivers, software and hardware combined test. Design of the drivers was based on the embedded software component ideas with full consideration of the portability and reusability. Procudure of component testing improved the stability and reliability of the drivers, and gave a good foundation for the practical application of the SD-Z33N node. In order to increase the market value of SD-Z33N wireless node's practical application, the author analysised and did some researches on the ZigBee RF4CE protocol stack which was transplanted into the SD-Z33N wireless node with some cutting. So the node could be more easily applied to the Smart Home sensor network. To verify the related basic application research, the author designed a simple model about Smart Home system, and the SD-Z33N was applied to this system, which verified the correctness and practicability of the work. The hardware and software components of MC13233 have been fully tested and approved by Freescale Company. And the SD-Z33N wireless nodes have been used in practical applications in our lab, running in good condition.