Infrared

Mary Grace C. Raborar ETEEAP - BSECE

Introduction
 

 

The growth in mobile and portable computing devices has led to an increase in demand for wireless data connectivity. Infrared (IR) components offer advantages of low-cost and low-power consumption, no regulatory restrictions, scalability, and very high data rates. Consumer electronics equipment has used IR technology as a transmission medium for remote control for a long time. The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) was established in 1993 as collaboration between major industrial organizations in order to establish an open standard for IR data communications.


Since the foundation of IrDA, the organization's standard has been adopted by leading component manufactures, OEMs, and hardware and software companies worldwide.

IRDA Architecture


Winsock Winsock is an API that allows Windows-based applications to access the transport protocols. The IrDA protocol stack is made available to applications by using Winsock. IrTran-P IrTran-P is a bidirectional image transfer protocol. Windows 2000 IrTran-P receives data only and is used for cameras with infrared capability. Many cameras have digital ports and can beam infrared data to a receiving computer. That data is then placed in a user-specified (or default) directory. IrDA Print Monitor IrDA Print Monitor is a software component that interfaces with an IrDA-connected printer to make that printer appear as any other printer to Windows 2000 users. IrXfer IrXfer is an IrDA file transfer application. Files can be dragged and dropped from the desktop to another computer. The Windows 2000 implementation of IrXfer has bidirectional transfer capabilities.

IRDA Architecture


Tiny TP Tiny TP is a flow control mechanism for IrDA. Tiny TP acts as a regulator to control the rate of data input or output. This prevents an overflow of data from occurring and creating data errors. IrDA.sys IrDA.sys is the transport protocol stack that supports IrDA. It provides support for applications through Winsock to the NDIS layer. IrCOMM IrCOMM is a software component that supports IrTran-P. IrCOMM uses Winsock, and is interfaced by default to the IrTran-P server. The IrTran-P server must be disabled if other applications need to use the IrCOMM port. IrLPT IrLPT is the protocol support that is used by IrDA Print Monitor. IrLPT enables printing directly from IrDA devices to IrDA printers.

IRDA Architecture


IrLPT IrLPT is the protocol support that is used by IrDA Print Monitor. IrLPT enables printing directly from IrDA devices to IrDA printers. IrLMP Infrared Link Management Protocol is used to multiplex various connections over one IrDA link. IrLAP Infrared Link Access Protocol is a media access control software component that determines which component can access the media during each time slice. FIR Driver A Fast Infrared driver (FIR) is a miniport driver provided by a hardware vendor to link hardware devices on the lower side of the protocol stack to the transport protocol. IrSIR.sys Serial Infrared driver is a Microsoft-provided miniport driver. It is an alternate driver to the Fast Infrared driver and can be used only in combination with Serial.sys. Serial.sys Serial.sys is used to connect infrared devices to the IrSIR.sys driver above in the protocol stack and the hardware device below.

Type of IR Links


IrDA defined four kinds of infrared links to support different data rates.


Serial Infrared (SIR) supporting speeds up to 115.2 Kbps Medium Infrared (MIR) supporting 0.576 Mbps and 1.152 Mbps data rates Fast Infrared (FIR) supporting a 4.0 Mbps data rate Very Fast Infrared (VFIR) supporting 16.0 Mbps.

Types of Modulation


RZI
 

Return to Zero Inverted Modulation. Normally used in SIR. 4 Pulse Position Modulation Used in FIR

4PPM
 

Return to Zero Inverted Modulation (RZI)



It calls for a logic 0 to consist of a light pulse that is a minimum of 1.6 usec and a maximum of 3/16 of a bit time, and a logic 1 to consist of no pulse occurring in the requisite time frame. The figure below shows an example of an IrDA Rev 1.0 physical layer frame transmission. Each byte is transmitted using a start bit of a logic 0 and a stop bit of a logic 1.

Return to Zero Inverted Modulation (RZI)



To accommodate the higher transmission rates that really make the IrDA very attractive, the IrDA Rev 1.1 High Speed extensions define two more physical layers. The first of these layers supports data rates of 0.576 Mbps and 1.152 Mbps. This layer uses the same RZI encoding scheme that Rev 1.0 does, but the framing and pulse durations are somewhat different. The IR pulse that represents a logic zero is between and 3/16 of a bit time. Each byte is not transmitted separately, with its own start and stop bits. Transmitted frames use standard HDLC format with bit stuffing after five consecutive logic ones and a 16 bit CRC. The other difference from the lower rate is that the start and stop flags both become 0x7E. An example of a transmitted data stream is as shown below.

4 Pulse Position Modulation (4PPM)



Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) encoding is achieved by defining a data symbol duration (Dt) and subsequently subdividing Dt into a set of equal time slices called "chips." In PPM schemes, each chip position within a data symbol represents one of the possible bit combinations. Each chip has a duration of Ct give by:
  

Ct = Dt/Base In this formula "Base" refers to the number of pulse positions, or chips, in each data symbol. The Base for IrDA PPM 4.0 Mb/s systems is defined as four, and the resulting modulation scheme is called "four pulse position modulation (4PPM)." The data rate of the IrDA PPM system is defined to be 4.0 Mb/s. The resulting values for Ct and Dt are as follows:
 

Dt = 500 ns Ct = 125 ns

4 Pulse Position Modulation (4PPM)



The figure below describes a data symbol field and its enclosed chip durations for the 4PPM scheme.

4 Pulse Position Modulation (4PPM)



 

Because there are four unique chip positions within each symbol in 4PPM, four independent symbols exist in which only one chip is logically a "one" while all other chips are logically a "zero." We define these four unique symbols to be the only legal data symbols (DD) allowed in 4PPM. Each DD represents two bits of payload data, or a single "data bit pair (DBP)", so that a byte of payload data can be represented by four DDs in sequence. The following table defines the chip pattern representation of the four unique DDs defined for 4PPM.

4 Pulse Position Modulation (4PPM)



Logical 1 represents a chip duration when the transmitting LED is emitting light, while logical 0 represents a chip duration when the LED is off. Data encoding for transmission is done LSB first. The following examples show how various data bytes would be represented after encoding for transmission. In these examples transmission time increases from left to right so that chips and symbols farthest to the left are transmitted first.