Long distance board
LD-Board (or Long Distance Board) is our most powerful radio machine. Relying on a CC1190 IC (by Texas Instruments), this carrier board amplifies the power transmitted by the hosted panStamp module 20 times and improves the sensitivity in the reception up to 6 dB.
With this carrier board several Kilometers can be achieved if there is a good line of sight. We got up to 2 Km at 38 Kbps and 868 MHz but stopped our tests there due to the lack of space - We had to go behind the mountains and then the line of sight was going to be lost. If the transmission speed is also lowered, this distance will be even longer.
This carrier board works only on the 863-928 MHz band. It does not work for 433 MHz.
According to most international/national regulations, this level of transmission power has to be taken under special care. You can not leave a node transmitting all the time at the maximum power for example. Moreover, in Europe this module should be shielded in some way if you plan to used it in a certified network. Simply understand that LD-board is a prototyping board and that it does not intend to become an end-device.
LD-board has the same pinout as the rest of mini-carrier boards. This means that LD-board can be stacked under (or onto) other carrier boards, as far as only one of the carrier boards has a panStamp module assembled.
Digital pins 18, 19 and 20 are internally used to drive the CC1190 IC so please leave them unconnected.
- Size: 1.0 x 2.2 in (25.4 x 55.8 mm)
- Pin spacing: 0.1 in (2.54 mm)
- Integrated PA (Power amplifier): up to 27 dBm (0.5 W) output power
- Integrated LNA (Low Noise Amplifier): 6 dB typical sensitivity improvement
- Input voltage (Vcc): 2.0 to 3.6 VDC
- Less than 5 uA in sleep mode
- Compatible with our 8678 and 915 MHz modules
LD-board works with any of the available sketches. The only modification that needs to be added to the sketch is the line used to enable the carrier board:
panstamp.radio.enableHGM();The above line tells the stack that the LD carrier board is present and also that the integrated PA and LNA need to be properly driven before transmitting and receiving.
If you want to go even further, you can increase the transmitting power of the panStamp itself so that more power will be amplified by the LD-board:
panstamp.setHighTxPower();
panstamp.radio.enableHGM();And finally, if you want to tget the maximum distance achievable with this board, you can also decrease the transmission speed of the nodes by setting DEFAULT_WORKING_MODE to MODE_LOW_SPEED in panstamp.h.