In a typical system, the CC2520 will be used together with a microcontroller, such as TI’s MSP430 ultra-low power MCUs, and a few additional passive components. The CC2520 reduces the load on the host controller by providing extensive hardware support for packet handling, data buffering, burst transmissions, data encryption, data authentication, clear channel assessment, link quality indication and packet timing information. The MSP430 MCU series is ideal for ZigBee-based applications due to its highly integrated peripherals like dynamic memory access (DMA) and digital-to-analog (DAC) and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) that provide high performance yet consume very little power.
Key CC2520 specifications include 1.8 V to 3.8 V supply range, -40°C to +125°C temperature range, 103 dB link budget (400 m line-of-sight range with the development kit), 50 dB adjacent channel rejection. The CC2520 provides an easy upgrade path for the CC2420 RF transceiver.