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Need Help with CC3000/ CC3100 Antenna design.

gsgill112

Hi All,

I was going through my old stock of Modules and I found couple of CC300 MOD without embedded Ant.

 

I know How to use CAD apps like Eagle and KiCAD but have never designed any Antenna based Module ?

 

Can anyone help me with standard components as I don't have any means to buy any fresh Inductors/ Caps for a tuning circuits ??

 

Regards,

  • And also a link to standard PCB Antenna Design. or any other guidelines.

  • in reply to gsgill112

    Have a look this for PCB antennas.  I haven’t used it but know someone who did.

  • Hi Gurinder,

     

    The CC3000 is best thrown away however, because it's very obsolete. It was not made by TI for very long, about 8 years ago.

    I'm guessing it had issues or was experimental.

    If you mean CC3100 then you'll find lots more information for that and it's a very mature stable product.

    Another option (if you don't wish to implement a PCB antenna) is to put an SMA connector on the board, and screw on an antenna.

    Here's an example, this is with CC3220 module.

    Not much to say about it, except that the track to the connector is about 0.8 mm thick, and the gap to the ground plane is 0.15 mm.

    The holes are 0.4 mm diameter, and separated about 1.6 mm. There's a ground plane on the other side too of course (1.6 mm thick PCB).

    You can use different values if required/desired, calculate the values from here. All the low-cost PCB manufacturers might not like 0.15 mm gap, but it's marginal and they may let you do it.

    image

  • in reply to shabaz

      wrote:

     

    Hi Gurinder,

     

    The CC3000 is best thrown away however, because it's very obsolete. It was not made by TI for very long, about 8 years ago.

    I'm guessing it had issues or was experimental.

    ...

    It's worth checking support for any CCxxxx device. Not only if it's advised for active production or not.

    Also if it is supported in recent RTOS and SDK releases.

    I have wifi, bluetooth and sub-1 GHz devices of that CC family and each of them has been abandoned in later software releases.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Thanks Shabaz,

    I did try this stunt before bot it totally didn't work, any guidance on Antenna Design ?

    image

    Regards,

  • So, rechecked

    I have about 6 x C3000 MOD, 2x CC3100 MOD R and 4 x CC3200 MOD R , any reference designs for making it into a dev board anyone ?

     

    Regards,

  • in reply to gsgill112

    Hi Gurinder,

     

    Was it definitely an antenna issue, or could it be something else? Were you able to get the LED blinking for example?

    Capacitors are needed on the supply rails for the WiFi to work, it has higher current demand.

    Also, you picked the worst option; the CC3000 may not work with recent WLAN configurations, if it doesn't support the latest ciphers.

    I don't know if it does or does not. I just know the CC3000 is obsolete for a long time.

    The CC3100 or CC3200 would have been the better option. The CC3100 is still in shipping products, so I believe it should work with modern WiFi routers.

    I'm guessing the same for the CC3200, but you can check the TI website for its status and check CCS as Jan mentions.

     

    For prototyping with these style modules, there's a different way, so you can more easily see if the connections are correct.

    If you get any proto board (say perf-board) then you can stick the CC3xxx module on it up-side down, and then use very short lengths of very thin wire (either enamelled copper wire, or, way better, Kynar or Tefzel wire of 30AWG size) to patch from the pads of the CC3xxx to the nearest hole on the perf-board. I've used that method with success with the CC3xxx series. To eliminate solder blobbyness, use 0.38mm solder _maximum_, ideally thinner. 0.5mm is too thick. You'll need an excellent pair of wire strippersexcellent pair of wire strippers and at least semi reasonable tweezerssemi reasonable tweezers to use the Kynar wire but it's worth it.

    If there is a center pad on the module, then that needs connecting to ground too. Also, all other grounds are to be connected together. And use surface-mount 100nF across the supply rails, as close as possible, and then a larger capacitor fairly nearby (a couple of centimeters distance max) too.

     

    Regarding antenna design, Frank and Jon have supplied the detail. For a test board, I used the SMA connector method as you did, and it was successful.

    Dumb question, but did you check that you really do have a mating SMA plug and socket? Some consumer antennas use reverse-SMA, and if you screw that to a normal (non-reverse-SMA) SMA connector, then the center connection is not made. That would definitely not work.