User's Manual
Table Of Contents
- Contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 DC and AC Characteristics
- 3 Electrical Interface
- 4 SPI Interface and Sequences
- 5 Power States
- 6 Messaging Protocol
- 7 microNode Provisioning
- 8 Antenna Diversity
- 9 Regulatory Considerations
- 10 Manufacturing Considerations
- 11 Errata
- Appendix A Abbreviations and Terms
- Appendix B PCB Land Pattern and Vias
- Appendix C REACH AND RoHS Compliance
- Appendix D On-Ramp Wireless RMA Process
- Appendix E microNode Mechanical Drawing
On-Ramp Wireless, Inc. 23 014-0033-00 Rev. H
5 Power States
The microNode has a number of states it runs through during its various operating modes.
General comments:
1. The microNode accepts a wide input voltage range (2.2-5.5V).
2. The microNode has low drop out (LDO) regulators that will operate 100% of the time the
microNode is powered (POWER_ON signal set high).
3. There are 3.3V/1.2V Buck/Boost Switching regulators that use the wide input range to drive
key RF and Digital circuits. The 3.3V regulator is only turned on in certain active operating
states of the microNode.
The microNode always tries to minimize its power consumption but is largely driven by network
operating states and modes of operation. This document does not describe all of the modes in
detail but, in general, there are two main operating modes for the microNode:
Continuous Mode
In this mode, the microNode is ON (awake) at least 50% of the time (100% of its RX cycle).
The microNode starts up, searches for the network, locks on, and Joins. In this mode, the
microNode nominally is either in RX or TX modes (radio is ON and in a high power
consumption state), or in an Idle state where the clocks and CPU are ON but the radio is OFF
(moderately low power mode). The continuous mode is usually for applications where the
Host and microNode are AC-powered and system current consumption is not an issue.
Slotted Mode
This mode has the microNode falling into a Deep Sleep state – the lowest power state of the
microNode. In this mode, the microNode is mostly powered down – except for a couple of
low power LDO Regulators. The microNode can sleep for hours at a time if the network is
configured to allow this.
The power states are described in the following sections.
5.1 Operating States
This section describes the various operating states within the operational modes.
5.1.1 Power Off State
When the microNode is totally non-functional, the Host can set the POWER_ON signal Low to
deactivate the circuitry of the microNode. This should NOT be confused with Deep Sleep states
where the microNode mostly sleeps yet maintains key network timers to wake up synchronously
with network activity. If awakened from the Power Off state, the microNode must go through a
very power-hungry search/acquisition algorithm to re-acquire the On-Ramp Total Reach
Network.