Data Acquisition Web

Strictly speaking, IrDA Lite is not a protocol, but it is significant enough in the world of IrDA to deserve brief mention. The majority of devices incorporating IrDA are embedded devices. Most of these devices provide dramatically less memory than laptops or desktops. IrDA Lite renders the minimal implementation of IrDA that still interoperates with “full-featured” IrDA stacks. It does so by sacrificing speed, throughput, and nonessential features.

The effort would be similar to removing parts from a car, but requiring that it still seat one passenger and be sufficiently capable of traveling some distance under certain conditions. For the use models where memory savings are worth the loss in throughput, the fit is great.

Typical IrDA Lite strategies include limiting the packet size to 64 bytes, limiting window size to one, limiting transmission speed to 9600, and using a simplified state chart. By employing these and other IrDA Lite strategies, it is possible to achieve a two to five fold reduction in RAM and ROM requirements. For some small devices, throughput and features are not as important as memory, and the decision to use IrDA Lite is easy. For other devices, the tradeoffs are not so straightforward. In these cases, one need not employ all IrDA Lite strategies. A designer can employ those strategies that make the most sense, garnering the memory savings desired, without completely sacrificing throughput or feature set.

Sensors, measurement devices, data acquisition equipment are among others potencial candidates to use IrDA Lite.