Transceiver meets ETSI Category 1 standard

ETSI category 1 compliance is the highest transceiver rating for European regulations and is required for safety-critical wireless applications such as social alarms and healthcare monitoring. The SX1235 expands the target applications for Semtech's wireless platform and provides an affordable high-performance radio IC solution to monitor, serve and increase the safety of a rising ageing population.

Previous category 1 solutions have only been realisable with large and expensive discrete solutions that are difficult to design and offer little flexibility, thus limiting the overall deployment of products designed to provide safety to the elderly and workers in hazardous conditions. An integrated solution with the SX1235 reduces the development time and cost with flexibility to tailor to multiple products leading to the expansion of products to serve this important market segment, said the company.

With 9.3mA receive mode current consumption, the SX1235 is geared for category 1 applications seeking the lowest consumption possible for maximum battery lifetime while giving the highest margin to the regulatory limits. Current consumption or power efficiency in both transmit and receive modes, determines the capacity of primary or secondary back-up battery cells used in category 1 products that have a significant influence on the cost of these systems.

According to the company, the SX1235 offers 20dBm maximum output power, -123dBm sensitivity at 1.2Kb/s and low current consumption at 9.3mA RX current, 100nA sleep current and 28mA TX current at 13dBm. In addition, the device boasts 6dB adjacent channel selectivity margin for category 1 compliance, 6dB margin for 2MHz category 1 blocking specification with specified SAW filter and

10dB margin for 10MHz category 1 blocking specification with specified SAW filter.

Operating within 1.8-3.7V, the RF transceiver is ideal for building alarms systems, wireless alarm, medical equipment and healthcare monitoring systems.

The SX1235 is available in production quantities and is priced at $1.95 each in 10,000-piece lots.