Virtual Wire Radio Modules

… for robust and reliable short range radio applications

The RFM brand of Virtual Wire short-range radio products is a range of second- and third- generation hybrid transmitter, receiver and transceiver modules available in a wide variety of frequencies for short range radio applications worldwide. These radio modules are ideally suited for low power (portable) short range applications, such as bar code readers, automated meter reading, POS terminals, medical monitors, home automation, consumer sports, data links, wireless terminals and many more, where lowest power consumption and at the same time small size and robust operation are required.

Features / Functionality

The Virtual Wire short-range radio products are very attractive to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) embedding RF capabilities and low power wireless communications within their products. These OEMs typically have the necessary RF engineering and networking expertise that enables them to incorporate low-power radio capabilities as a feature within their product. Often they will not only connect the devices they manufacture to each other but also to the Internet.

All Virtual Wire short-range radio products feature extremely small size, very low-power consumption, and excellent RF performance.

Equally important is how RFM radio devices provide the system designer flexibility and fast time-to-market for their applications development phase. The breadth of frequency ranges covers both North American, European and other international frequency bands for low-power data transmission.

The latest 3G product generation delivers more transmit power (10mW output) and at the same time improved receiver sensitivity (by up to 5dB) which results in more than twice the transmission range (up to 400 m LOS).

The new modulation format (DSSS) makes the modules suitable also in applications where high data rate (up to 1 Mbps) is the main reqirement.

For battery powered applications the already low sleep mode current was further reduced to 200 nA and the integrated clock recovery feature further simplifies the modules integration in embedded wireless applications.