SAN JOSE, California, June 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- The radio chip enables long range, low power, wireless connectivity for
IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today the availability of
the AT86RF212 800/900 MHz IEEE 802.15.4(TM) RF transceiver for low power
wireless applications, including ZigBee(R).

The AT86RF212 offers an industry best RF performance with a link budget
of up to 120 dB in the 800 MHz and 900 MHz ISM bands available in Europe and
North America, respectively. The link budget is the result of the -110 dBm
sensitivity offered by the device and the maximum output power of +10 dBm.
The extremely high link budget combined with the reduced path loss in the
800/900 MHz enables long range wireless communication without the use of
costly external LNA or PA.

Designing products with the AT86RF212 chipset enables battery operated
devices to run for many years on a single battery because of the AT86RF212's
low current consumption in both active and in sleep mode. The current
consumption in receive mode is 9 mA and the consumption in transmit is 17 mA
at a power output level of 5 dBm. The sleep mode current consumption is down
to 0.2 uA.

"Selecting a 800/900 MHz radio chip for your wireless applications gives
you a range benefit of nearly 3 times compared to a 2.4 GHz device due to the
reduced path loss on the lower frequencies," said Magnus Pedersen, Director
of Wireless MCU Product Marketing at Atmel. "Adding the benefit of the
extremely high link budget of the AT86RF212, the device outperforms most
solutions available in the industry today by as much as 10 times the range.
This has been confirmed by initial range tests performed by our partner
MeshNetics, showing an outdoor range of about 6 km without the use of any
external LNA's or PA's," he added.

"Atmel is our long-standing silicon partner, and we are pleased to pair
their best-in-class AT86RF212 transceiver with our BitCloud ZigBee PRO
Feature Set software on our ZigBit 900 RF module for sub-1 GHz band," said
Alexey Rybakov, Managing Director of MeshNetics' ZigBit Business Unit.
"MeshNetics is a ZigBee House that offers easy-to-integrate RF modules,
ZigBee software and engineering services for OEMs and system integrators. By
using the industry-leading silicon from Atmel, we can offer our customers
high quality ZigBee modules and development tools."

To support the wide range of wireless applications requested by the
market, AT86RF212 handles multiple data rates. The 20/40 Kbit/s and 100/250
Kbit/s supported by the device is compliant to IEEE 802.15.4-2006. High speed
data rates such as 200/400/1000 Kbit/s are also supported enabling wireless
applications demanding more bandwidth.

Security is handled by an AES 128-bit onboard hardware engine. The
security engine improves the overall system power efficiency and timing. The
stand-alone 128-bit AES engine can be accessed in parallel to all PHY
operational transactions and states using the SPI interface. Atmel wireless
solution is made of radio devices and microcontrollers such as AVR(R)
offering the best-in-class combination of performance and low power
consumption required for such applications. A set of firmware and
applications notes has been prepared for AT86RF212 to shorten time to market
for the Atmel customers. This includes low-level drivers for simple wireless
applications, IEEE 802.15.4 MAC for standard compliant solutions as well as
solutions for ZigBee. Updated firmware and documentation are available from
the web pages of Atmel and partners.

Availability and Pricing

Samples of the new AT86RF212 are available now in Pb-free QFN32 packages,
measuring only 5mm x 5 mm. Pricing starts at US $3.21 in 10k-piece
quantities.

Footnote
    LNA = Low Noise Amplifier
    PA = Power AmplifierIEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics
    Engineers
    AES = Advanced Encryption Standard
    SPI = Serial Peripheral Interface
    PHY = Physical medium
    ZigBee = Low Power Wireless communication protocols defined by the ZigBee
    Alliance



About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio
frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest
intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide
the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on consumer,
industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets.

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), logo and
combinations thereof, AVR(R) and others, are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product
names may be trademarks of others.

Information:
    Detailed information about AT86RF212 can be retrieved at:
    http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?PN=AT86RF212
    Product information on Atmel's AVR can be retrieved at
    http://www.atmel.com/avr

    Press Contacts:
    Philippe Faure, Marketing Communications Director - Microcontrollers
    Tel: +33-2-40-18-18-87, Email: philippe.faure@atmel.com

    Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
    Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com

Web site: http://www.atmel.com/avr