IR SECTION:

WHAT IS INFRARED?
Infrared is an energy radiation with a frequency below our eyes sensitivity, so we cannot
see it. Even that we can not "see" sound frequencies, we know that it exist, we can listen
them.

Even that we can not see or hear infrared, we can feel it at our skin temperature sensors.
When you approach your hand to fire or warm element, you will "feel" the heat, but you
can't see it. You can see the fire because it emits other types of radiation, visible to your
eyes, but it also emits lots of infrared that you can only feel in your skin.

INFRARED IN ELECTRONICS
Infra-Red is interesting, because it is easily generated and doesn't suffer electromagnetic
interference, so it is nicely used to communication and control, but it is not perfect, some
other light emissions could contains infrared as well, and that can interfere in this
communication. The sun is an example, since it emits a wide spectrum or radiation.

The adventure of using lots of infra-red in TV/VCR remote controls and other
applications, brought infra-red diodes (emitter and receivers) at very low cost at the
market.

From now on you should think as infrared as just a "red" light. This light can means
something to the receiver, the "on or off" radiation can transmit different meanings. Lots
of things can generate infrared, anything that radiate heat do it, including out body,
lamps, stove, oven, friction your hands together, even the hot water at the faucet.

To allow a good communication using infra-red, and avoid those "fake" signals, it is
imperative to use a "key" that can tell the receiver what is the real data transmitted and
what is fake. As an analogy, looking eye naked to the night sky you can see hundreds of
stars, but you can spot easily a far away airplane just by its flashing strobe light. That
strobe light is the "key", the "coding" element that alerts us.

Similar to the airplane at the night sky, our TV room may have hundreds of tinny IR
sources, our body and the lamps around, even the hot cup of tea. A way to avoid all those
other sources, is generating a key, like the flashing airplane. So, remote controls use to
pulsate its infrared in a certain frequency. The IR receiver module at the TV, VCR or
stereo "tunes" to this certain frequency and ignores all other IR received. The best
frequency for the job is between 30 and 60 kHz, the most used is around 36 kHz

IR GENERATION
To generate a 36 kHz pulsating infrared is quite easy, more difficult is to receive and
identify this frequency. This is why some companies produce infrared receives, that
contains the filters, decoding circuits and the output shaper, that delivers a square wave,
meaning the existence or not of the 36kHz incoming pulsating infrared.

It means that those 3 dollars small units, have an output pin that goes high (+5V) when
there is a pulsating 36kHz infrared in front of it, and zero volts when there is not this
radiation.

A square wave of approximately 27uS (microseconds) injected at the base of a transistor,

can drive an infrared LED to transmit this pulsating light wave. Upon its presence, the
commercial receiver will switch its output to high level (+5V).If you can turn on and off
this frequency at the transmitter, your receiver's output will indicate when the transmitter
is on or off.

Those IR demodulators have inverted logic at its output, when a burst of IR is sensed it
drives its output to low level, meaning logic level = 1.

The TV, VCR, and Audio equipment manufacturers for long use infra-red at their remote
controls. To avoid a Philips remote control to change channels in a Panasonic TV, they
use different codification at the infrared, even that all of them use basically the same
transmitted frequency, from 36 to 50 kHz. So, all of them use a different combination of
bits or how to code the transmitted data to avoid interference.

RC-5
Various remote control systems are used in electronic equipment today. The RC5 control
protocol is one of the most popular and is widely used to control numerous home
appliances, entertainment systems and some industrial applications including utility
consumption remote meter reading, contact-less apparatus control, telemetry data
transmission, and car security systems. Philips originally invented this protocol and
virtually all Philips’ remotes use this protocol. Following is a description of the RC5.
When the user pushes a button on the hand-held remote, the device is activated and sends
modulated infrared light to transmit the command. The remote separates command data
into packets. Each data packet consists of a 14-bit data word, which is repeated if the user
continues to push the remote button.
The data packet structure is as follows:
 2 start bits,
 1 control bit,

 5 address bits,

 6 command bits.

The start bits are always logic ‘1’ and intended to calibrate the optical receiver automatic
gain control loop. Next, is the control bit. This bit is inverted each time the user releases
the remote button and is intended to differentiate situations when the user continues to
hold the same button or presses it again. The next 5 bits are the address bits and select the
destination device. A number of devices can use RC5 at the same time. To exclude
possible interference, each must use a different address. The 6 command bits describe the
actual command. As a result, a RC5 transmitter can send the 2048 unique commands.
The transmitter shifts the data word, applies Manchester encoding and passes the created
one-bit sequence to a control carrier frequency signal amplitude modulator. The
amplitude modulated carrier signal is sent to the optical transmitter, which radiates the
infrared light. In RC5 systems the carrier frequency has been set to 36 kHz. Figure below
displays the RC5 protocol.

The receiver performs the reverse function. The photo detector converts optical
transmission into electric signals, filters it and executes amplitude demodulation. The
receiver output bit stream can be used to decode the RC5 data word. This operation is
done by the microprocessor typically, but complete hardware implementations are
present on the market as well. Single-die optical receivers are being mass produced by a
number of companies such as Siemens, Temic, Sharp, Xiamen Hualian, Japanese Electric
and others. Please note that the receiver output is inverted (log. 1 corresponds to
illumination absence).
IR Transmitter:

TSAL6200 is a high efficiency infrared emitting diode in GaAlAs on GaAs technology,

molded in clear, blue grey tinted plastic packages. In comparison with the standard GaAs
on GaAs technology these emitters achieve more than 100 % radiant power improvement
at a similar wavelength. The forward voltages at low current and at high pulse current
roughly correspond to the low values of the standard technology. Therefore these emitters
are ideally suitable as high performance replacements of standard emitters.

Features
 Extra high radiant power and radiant intensity.
 High reliability.
 Low forward voltage.
 Suitable for high pulse current operation.
 Standard T-1¾ (∅ 5 mm) package.
 Angle of half intensity ϕ = ± 17°.
 Peak wavelength λp = 940 nm.
 Good spectral matching to Silicon photodetectors.

Applications
 Infrared remote control units with high power requirements
 Free air transmission systems
 Infrared source for optical counters and card readers
 IR source for smoke detectors.
IR RECEIVER
Description
The TSOP17.. – series are miniaturized receivers for infrared remote control systems.
PIN diode and preamplifier are assembled on lead frame, the epoxy package is designed
as IR filter.

The demodulated output signal can directly be decoded by a microprocessor. TSOP17.. is

the standard IR remote control receiver series, supporting all major transmission codes.

Features
 Photo detector and preamplifier in one package
 Internal filter for PCM frequency
 Improved shielding against electrical field disturbance
 TTL and CMOS compatibility
 Output active low
 Low power consumption
 High immunity against ambient light
 Continuous data transmission possible (up to 2400 bps)
 Suitable burst length .10 cycles/burst
Suitable Data Format
The circuit of the TSOP17 is designed in that way that unexpected output pulses due to
noise or disturbance signals are avoided. A bandpass filter, an integrator stage and an
automatic gain control are used to suppress such disturbances. The distinguishing mark
between data signal and disturbance signal are carrier frequency, burst length and duty
cycle.

The data signal should fulfil the following conditions:

1. Carrier frequency should be close to center frequency of the bandpass (e.g. 38
kHz).
2. Burst length should be 10 cycles/ burst or longer.
3. After each burst which is between 10 cycles and 70 cycles a gap time of at least
14 cycles is necessary.
4. For each burst which is longer than 1.8ms a corresponding gap time is necessary
at some time in the data stream. This gap time should have at least same length as
the burst.
5. Up to 1400 short bursts per second can be received continuously.

Some examples for suitable data format are: NEC Code, Toshiba Micom Format, Sharp
Code, RC5 Code, RC6 Code, R–2000 Code and Sony Format (SIRCS). When a
disturbance signal is applied to the TSOP17, it can still receive the data signal. However
the sensitivity is reduced to that level that no unexpected pulses will occur. Some
examples for such disturbance signals which are suppressed by the TSOP17 are:
• DC light (e.g. from tungsten bulb or sunlight)
• Continuous signal at 38 kHz or at any other frequency
• Signals from fluorescent lamps with electronic ballast (an example of the signal
modulation is in the figure below).