Electronic – How would you combine DC power, bi-directional serial data, and an RF signal on a single 50-Ohm coax feedline

dcham-radioRFserialserial-bus

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.

Related Topic