Interface between ZigBee silicon and microcontroller parts

[omara007]

Hi guys ..

Anyone has any idea about the nature of the interface between the ZigBee silicon part (ZigBee PHY and MAC) and the upper ZigBee protocol stack (on a piece of microcontroller) ?

And if some one has implemented ZigBee's MAC .. did you implement it as complete software running on a microcontroller .. or as hardware same as PHY ? ..

And if the whole system is a SoC .. in other worlds, the manufacturer decided to put everything on one chip .. what will be the pur hardware part and what will be software running on an embedded microcontroller ? ... and what's the nature of the interface .. ?

 

[moneychaser]

For OKI (ml7065) and Integration (ia4451) parts, the interface is to the MAC and ZigBee is SPI.

For ChipCon cc2420 & Ember em2420, all software is implemented on an external MCU, with an SPI interface to the PHY / RF.

ChipCon, Ember and Jennic now have SoCs that have the MCU integrated on same die with RF, so application, ZigBee and MAC all run on the same chip.