I would like to power a remote device and communicate with it over some serial protocol on the far-end of a 50-Ohm coax feedline (RS232, i2c, SPI, etc), while at the same time sending/receiving an RF signal (144-148MHz ham band).
A bias tee is simple enough to get power down the line, but how could I add serial communications?
- Are there existing components or ICs to facilitate such a data encapsulation?
- What bitrate can you achieve?
Best Answer
They weren't originally designed for it, but I have seen applications that use bidirectional radio chips such as the TI CC1101 to pass control/status data in both directions through a coax alongside DC power and another RF signal.
The chip handles a lot of the details and is relatively easy to set up with a microcontroller. In fact, in one design, a very simple "soft core" microcontroller embedded in an FPGA takes care of it. The data rate can be set anywhere from 0.6 to 600 kbps.