Radio relay station microcontrollers

Radio relay station microcontrollers

April 6, 2005

A typical radio relay station acts as a conveyor of signals, ranging from airborne to microwave signals, and communicates between stations that would otherwise be unable to communicate with each other due to distance, terrain or other factors – space satellites, for example, are a form of relay station, conveying information between two locations on different points of the planet. A single radio relay station can contain as many as 3,000 inputs and outputs.

The company conducted series of projects involving programming of microcontrollers and logic circuits for a radio relay station control unit. The microcontroller is a single plate containing a set of integrated electronic circuits to form a computer, complete with processor, memory and customizable input/output functionality. Microcontrollers are built in such a way that the application is embedded into the circuitry.

For the required purposes of a radio relay station, the controller must be durable and long lasting, have a low-power MCU. A setup for a radio relay station can involve the controller being connected to a wireless transceiver unit, with the transceiver unit then connected to signaling processing unit. The microcontroller is able to analyse and process incoming signals, using them to issue the next commands in the signaling process.

Wireless/radio equipment vendor

Low-level module for radio relay stations

Software for a control unit of a PDH (Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy) radio relay station. It was implemented using an assembler with a National Semiconductors microcontroller and Atmel AT90. Our implementation included the designing of network protocols, external router functions, user interface (keyboard, LCD), and internal routing. We also reengineered software for the control unit of the PDH radio relay station to comply with the new requirements of the development environment: C under eCos with Atmel AT91.

Wireless/radio equipment vendor

Web interface for radio relay stations

Our task was to develop a web-based application to interact with the radio station's MC.