September 24, 2020 by Abdulwaliy Oyekunle
The CC2640R2F is one of the SimpleLink wireless microcontrollers manufactured by Texas Instruments. It supports Bluetooth 5.1 Low Energy, which has a clock speed of 2.4GHz. The device is useful in a wide range of applications, including those in the automation, industrial, and medical fields.
Being a microcontroller (MCU), the CC2640R2F by Texas Instruments, or TI, has a robust host of embedded system components. For computation and response to interrupts, the MCU features 32-bit Arm Cortex-M3 as its main processing core.
The product also has a radiofrequency, or RF, core, and In this instance, it is the Arm Cortex-M0 that serves as the main processing core. Such a processor cannot be programmed by the engineers who utilise it; rather, its major use within the CC2640R2F is to handle the data that is shuttled to and from the main system and deliver the information in a given packet structure. The Arm Cortex-M0 radiofrequency core is also responsible for managing the resources of the MCU’s featured communication system: Bluetooth 5.1 Low Energy.
A close-up of Texas Instruments’ wireless microcontroller device. Image Credit: Texas Instruments.
The CC2640R2F, moreover, has a sensor controller that can be activated by a PC application software called the Sensor Controller Studio. The sensor controller features a sensor controller engine, a 12-bit analogue-to-digital converter, two comparators, and a combination of SPI and I2C as the digital communication protocol. The sensor controller performs quite a number of functions, such as capacitive sensing, keyboard scanning, oscillator calibration, and so on.
The memory units of the microcontroller comprise 275KB of non-volatile memory—of which, 128KB is used as an in-system programmable flash. Moreover, it uses 8KB of static random-access memory (SRAM) for cache and has 28KB of system SRAM. In the said RF section, a dedicated 4KB of SRAM is included.
Apart from the main features that give the CC2640R2F a marked performance, the product also features some essential components to enhance its functionality.
Among the peripheral components is the MCU’s true random number generator (TRNG) module. The TRNG module provides a non-deterministic noise source that is used to generate such security measures as keys and initialisation vectors. Also provided is support for communication interfaces, such as the universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (aka UART), the serial peripheral interface, and the I2C interface.
The device supports a real-time clock and a watchdog timer. The watchdog timer acts as a reset for the system in case of software failure. In addition, four general-purpose timer modules—Timer 0, Timer 1, Timer 2, and Timer 3—are included.
Other peripheral components include a direct access memory controller, eight capacitive sensing buttons, an integrated temperature sensor, comparators (such as continuous-time comparators and an ultra-low power analogue comparator), and so on.
The CC2640R2F comes in different packages and square-shaped body sizes, depending on the product’s part type. The CC2640R2FRGZ (bold font added to differentiate between series types), due to its having 48 pins, is packaged in a very thin quad flat no-lead package. The same goes for the CC2640R2FRHB, given that it has a body size of 5 mm by 5 mm. Another part type of the device, the CC2640R2FYFV, which appears in a die-sized ball grid array, has 34 pins and body size of 2.7 mm by 2.7 mm.
The functional diagram of Texas Instruments’ CC2640R2F microcontroller. Image Credit: Texas Instruments.
The CC2640R2F microcontroller can be operated over a wide range of voltage supplies. For battery-powered operation, the recommended operating voltage ranges from 1.8V to 3.8V. The device comfortably operates in an ambient temperature that ranges from −40 °C to 85 °C.
The CC2640R2F is characterised by its Bluetooth Low Energy feature, as part of its physical (PHY) layer support; whereas, one of its TI counterparts, the CC2620F128, features the IEEE 802.15.4 low rates wireless network in its PHY layer support.
Furthermore, the CC2630F128, also manufactured by Texas Instruments, comes in different packages like the CC2640R2F. The packages relevant to the former include the CC2630F128RGZ, the CC2630F128RHB, and the CC2630F128RSM—all of which are packaged in the very thin quad flat no-lead package, as introduced earlier.
Texas Instruments’ CC2640R2F microcontroller is suitable for use in a wide range of applications, one of which is in both home and office security systems. What’s more, the product suits certain human-machine interfaces in industrial use; plus, it can also serve as one of the major components used in the designing of patient monitoring devices.
For engineers using the CC2640R2F to develop their desired algorithms, as well as to evaluate and debug any hardware and software errors that they may encounter, Texas Instruments also provides development kits—the software tools of which include the SmartRF Studio 7 and (as previously mentioned) the Sensor Controller Studio.
