RAK4600 Breakout Board Datasheet

Overview

Description

RAK4600 Breakout Board is specifically designed to allow easy access to the pins on the board to simplify development and testing. The breakout board form factor allows the RAK4600 stamp module form factor pinout to be transferred to 2.54 mm headers.

The board itself has the RAK4600 at its core, integrating an nRF52832 MCU and an SX1276 LoRa chip. It has Ultra-Low Power Consumption of 13.3 μA (down to 11.2 μA @ 2.0 V) in sleep mode, high LoRa max output power (20 dBm) in work mode, and BLE output power up to 4 dBm.

The board complies with LoRaWAN 1.0.2 specification. It also supports Lora P2P Point-to-Point communication.

The RF communication capabilities of the board (LoRa + BLE) make it suitable for a variety of applications in the IoT field, such as home automation, sensor networks, building automation, and personal area networks applications (health/fitness sensors and monitors).

Features

• LoRa module for Smart City, Smart Agriculture, Smart Industry
• I/O ports: UART/I2C/GPIO (optional NFC interface)
• Frequency range: 863–923 MHz (entire LoRa high band spectrum)
• Low-Power Wireless Systems with 7.8 kHz to 500 kHz Bandwidth
• LoRa Tx power up to 20 dBm
• BLE 5.0 (Tx power -20 dBm to +4 dBm in 4 dB steps)
• Serial Wire Debug (SWD) interface
• Ultra-Low Power Consumption of 13.3 μA (down to 11.2 μA @ 2.0 V) in sleep mode
• Supply voltage: 2.0 V ~ 3.6 V
• Temperature range: -40° C ~ +85° C

Specifications

Overview

The RAK4600 Breakout Board is shown in Figure 1, which displays the top view of the module.

Figure 7832: RAK4600 Breakout Board Illustration

Hardware

The hardware specification is categorized into five (5) parts. It discusses the interfacing, pinouts, and its corresponding functions and diagrams. It also covers the RF and electrical parameters that include the tabular data of the functionalities and standard values of the RAK4600 Breakout Board.

Interfaces

SWD Programming Interface

Connect the four debug/programming SWD pins of the board to the RAKDAP1 adapter:

1. VDD
2. SWDIO
3. SWCLK
4. GND

NOTE

For the aforementioned reason, it is best you leave these exposed for programming purposes and not to remap them as GPIOs.

UART Port

There is one UART interface on the RAK4600 Breakout Board:

• USART1 – recommended for debugging/firmware update

I2C interface

The following pins are intended for I2C (require 10k resistance pull-up):

• I2C_SCL
• I2C_SDA

RF interface

Both are utilizing an I-PEX connector, where one is for the LoRa antenna and the other for the BLE.

NFC interface

Two physical pins can be configured either as NFC antenna pins (factory default) or as GPIOs. When configured as NFC antenna pins, the GPIOs on those pins will automatically be set to DISABLE state and a protection circuit will be enabled to prevent the chip from being damaged in the presence of a strong NFC field. The protection circuit will short the two pins together if the voltage difference exceeds approximately 2 V.

Pin Definition

Figure 2 shows the pinout of the RAK4600 Breakout Board:

Figure 7833: RAK4600 Breakout Board Pinout

The pin definitions of the RAK4600 Breakout Board are shown in the following tables below:

J7 Pin Definitions

Pin	Name	I/O	Description	Alternate functions
1	P0.18	I/O	GPIO NRF52832 P0.18	GPIO, Single wire output, Trace port output
2	P0.19	I/O	GPIO NRF52832 P0.19	GPIO
3	NFC1	I/O	NFC antenna connection GPIO (NRF52832 P0.09)	NFC antenna connection GPIO
4	NFC2	I/O	NFC antenna connection GPIO (NRF52832 P0.10)	NFC antenna connection GPIO
5	SWDIO	I/O	SWD Programming	Serial wire debug I/O for debug and programming
6	SWCLK	I/O	SWD Programming	Serial wire debug clock input for debug and programming
7	I2C_SCL	I/O	I2C (GPIO NRF52832 P0.12)	GPIO
8	I2C_SDA	I/O	I2C (GPIO NRF52832 P0.13)	GPIO

J8 Pin Definitions

Pin	Name	I/O	Description	Alternate Functions
1	VDD		DC 3V3	Supply voltage 2.0~3.3 VDC
2	USART1_TX	I/O	USART1_TX (GPIO NRF52832 P0.23)	GPIO
3	USART1_RX	I/O	USART1_RX (GPIO NRF52832 P0.22)	GPIO
4	GND		Ground
5	MCU_NRST	I/O	MCU reset (GPIO NRF52832 P0.03)	GPIO, Configurable as reset pin
6	Reserved	I/O	Reserved (GPIO NRF52832 P0.14)	GPIO, Trace port output
7	Reserved	I/O	Reserved (GPIO NRF52832 P0.17)	GPIO
8	GND	I/O	Ground

J4 Pin Definitions

Pin	Name	I/O	Description	Alternate Functions
1	GND		Ground
2	VDD		DC 3V3	Supply voltage 2.0~3.3 VDC

LoRa Transceiver IC Connection to RAK4600 Breakout Board

LoRa IC Pin	NRF52832 IO pin
DIO0	P0.27
DIO1	P0.28
DIO2	P0.29
DIO3	P0.30
DIO4	P0.31
DIO5	NC
SPI1_CLK	P0.07
SPI1_MISO	P0.06
SPI1_MOSI	P0.05
SPI1_NSS	P0.04
VCTL1	P0.16
VCTL2	P0.15

NOTE

The LoRa Transceiver IC Connection pins are not exposed.

RF Switch Control Logic Table

LoRa Mode	VCTL1 GPIO	VCTL2 GPIO
TX mode	H	L
RX mode	L	H

Logic Level

H level (1.8 V - 3.30 V)
L level (0 V)

RF Characteristics

Operating Frequencies

The RAK4600 Breakout Board supports the following LoRa bands:

Module	Region	Frequency
RAK4600 (H)	Russia	RU864
	India	IN865
	Europe	EU868
	North America	US915
	Australia	AU915
	Korea	KR920
	Asia	AS923

Electrical Characteristics

Power Consumption

The table below shows the power consumption of the RAK4600 Breakout Board:

Item	Power Consumption	Condition
Tx mode LoRa @20 dBm	125 mA	LoRa @ PA_BOOST & BT sleep
Tx mode LoRa @17 dBm	92 mA	LoRa @ PA_BOOST & BT sleep
Tx mode BT @4 dBm	9 mA	BT Tx mode & LoRa sleep
Rx mode LoRa @37.5 Kbps	17 mA	LoRa @ Receive mode & BT sleep
Rx mode BT @2 Mbps	11.5 mA	BT Rx mode & LoRa sleep

Sleep Current

Feature	Condition	Minimum (2.0 V)	Typical (3.3 V)	Maximum	Unit
Current Consumption	EU868	11.2	13.3		μA
	US915	11.5	12.5		μA

Schematic Diagram

Figure 7834: RAK4600 Breakout Board Schematic

Software

Download the latest firmware of the RAK4600 Breakout Board in the table provided.

Firmware

Model	Version	Source
RAK4600	3.4.0.14	Download

Certification

CE Certification

FCC Certification