SHORT - RANGE WIRELESS Advances in Short - Range RF Transceivers Drive Link Robustness

Just when it seemed like the market for short-range RF technologies had become synonymous with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other products reaching commodity status, there will soon be another signal to contend with: ZigBee. This pervasive wireless networking environment adds to the challenge that engineers designing these systems have to provide a receiver that delivers valid, uncorrupted data packets. The recent explosion of RF wireless services in everyday life has made it even more important to remember the factors that make a radio link reliable, immune to interference, robust and bulletproof. Much of the task falls to the radio transceiver chipset. This paper gives the key to a detailed readout of the datasheets, where not only sensitivity, but also spurious response rejection and input third order intercept point (IIP3) are key specifications.