This paper presents a project-based final year project course on completion of Bachelor degree in Telecommunication engineering. The goal of this project was to provide engineering students a hands-on experience involving actual engineering design on communication circuits, printed circuit board (PCB) design, layout, fabrication, assembly, and testing. The scope of the project was been projected in develop a RF remote control system that will be capable for controlling various electrical appliances in the vicinity of 100 meters. The control signals has to traverse wirelessly by means of modulation with radio frequency carrier signal ranging from frequency band of 385MHz to 480MHz.

1. WIRELESS HOME AUTOMATION USING PIC MICROCONTROLLER
BASED ON RF-MODULE
Manfred Kibona, graduate engineer at University of Dar es salaam, BSc. Telecommunication
engineering. Phone. 0768-799-454, mail: kibonamanfred@gmail.com
Supervisor Dr. Omar F. Hamad
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a project-based final year project course on completion of Bachelor degree in
Telecommunication engineering. The goal of this project was to provide engineering students a
hands-on experience involving actual engineering design on communication circuits, printed
circuit board (PCB) design, layout, fabrication, assembly, and testing.
Through project-based learning, students not only learn technical skills in designing and
Manufacturing an electronic device, but also develop their project management and
Communication skills early in their course of study at the university. The project outline are
presented in this paper as well as project evaluations and students’ feedback.
INTRODUCTION
The scope of the project was been projected in develop a RF remote control system that will be
capable for controlling various electrical appliances in the vicinity of 100 meters. The control
signals has to traverse wirelessly by means of modulation with radio frequency carrier signal
ranging from frequency band of 385MHz to 480MHz.
The control system has to comprise of small portable hand remote control and fixed switchboard
controller where appliances to controlled are connected to.
There are dangerous facilities or machines i.e. high voltage operating machines, in which for safety
reasons has to be operated at a distance, so as to isolate hazards from works. But also there are
some people due incapability or disability reasons it is difficult for them to have direct access
easily, not only but also in processing industries control system there is needed means that I has to
be monitored continuously, by increasing the range of operation means improvement of produced
goods.
OBJECTIVES
Main Objective of this project is to develop a control system to control electrical appliances
remotely. To enhance facilities in embedded systems like range, actively operate the power line
devices through the radio waves and indicate the current status of the operation.

2. Small and light handled smartly remote controller to be operated by any group of people. Along
with the complexity and carry over around the home, industrial or plant area.
 Design and implement of RF remote controller (transmitter)
 Design and implementation of RF remote controlled switch board.
 Design and print PCB (Printed Circuit Board) for both receiver (switch board) and transmitter
(remote controller)
 Test and analyze performance of the device
ARCHITECTURE OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
Below is the block diagram showing the signal flow, signal processors arrangement parts
(subsystem) and the way interconnection is. These blocks and parts are: Transmitter (remote
controller), Receiver, Decoder and packet algorithm, microcomputer, switching unit and power
unit.
Figure 1 Block diagram showing the hardware arrangement and interaction

3. THEORY
Teleportation of control signals in air is via transmission by means of asynchronous binary
amplitude shifting keying modulation. One advantage of ASK communication is that on incoming
random data signal does not require bit-to-symbol conversion. Therefore on the transmitter side a
random data stream and a carrier signal are directly multiplied and up-converted to RF band.
The incoming base band signal is a random sequence so m(t) is expressed as
Where An is a random variable value of 1 or 0 with equal probabilities in stochastic process and
rect(t) is a box of car function (single pulse) bit period Tb
Modulated signal XASK(t) .It arrives at receiver with attenuation factor AC and phase shift. PSD of
arrived signal is
Arrival signal is multiplied by itself (mutual mixing) resulted in baseband data signal and
modulated signal with carrier frequency that is twice that of the signal carrier signal.
And power spectrum is as follows

4. Figure 2 Matlab program output to show the Amplitude shifting Keying Modulation
SYSTEM DESIGN SPECIFICATION
• Receive and transmission band 280 to 434MHz transmit frequency 433.92MHz
The industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands
• Demodulation scheme used is Amplitude Shifting Keying (ASK)
• The system is capable of controlling 16 different appliances.
• Data rate transmission is 4800bps
• Unique pairing ID between the receiver and transmitter specified.
• Output power is 13.5dBm at supply voltage of 9V D.C
• Duplex type is transmit only and receive only
• Length of antenna to be employed is 17cm (Quarter wave antenna for attain the
maximum distance at low power).

5. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
(FOR THE TRANSMITTER)
• Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC18F4520)
• SEVEN push buttons (SPDT)
• 212 series encoder from HOLTEK (HT12E)
• RF Transmission module (TLP 433.92)
• 9V battery power supply (9V‐PP3‐block)
• Voltage regulator (LM7805)
• 4 resistors three of 10k and one of 65Ohm
• Crystal oscillator 8MHz
• Four, two ceramic capacitors (22 pF) and polarized 330F and 100nF
• Antenna of length 17cm
• One red LED
• LCD display (LCD041L 16X4 characters)
(AT RECEIVER SIDE)
• Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC18F4520)
• Five electro-magnetic relays (5V - 12V)
• 212 series decoder from HOLTEK (HT12D)
• RF Receiver module with Colppit’s oscillator
• Step down transformer 220V ac to 12V dc
• Electrolytic capacitor 100nF and 330nF
• Four pair diodes 2N4148
• Voltage regulator (LM7805)
• Quartz crystal oscillator 10MHz
• Four, two ceramic capacitors 22Pf, 330F,100nF
• Resistors 51K, 470 Ohm,10K,470 Ohm
• One NPN transistor BC 547/548
• Two LED green and red
• Antenna of length 17cm

6. PIC18F4520 MICRO-CONTROLLER
Why PIC 18f4520 preferred choice?
What is PIC?
The PIC microcontroller is a low cost ‘computers on a chip’ manufactured by Microchip. They
allow electronic designers impart intelligence and logic to a single chip for special purpose
applications. This powerful yet easy to program into a 40-pin package.
Figure 1 PIC 18F4520 microcontroller and its pin description layout
RF MODULES
Figure 4 Receiver side
L1 and C8 form the pass band filter front end. Purpose is to attenuate the external and undesired
outside band noise which reduces receiver performance.
𝑓 =
1
2 ∗ 𝑝𝑖 ∗ 𝑠𝑞𝑟𝑡( 𝐿1∗ 𝐶8)
𝐵𝑊 = 𝐵𝑊@433.92𝑀ℎ𝑧 ∗ 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞(
𝑀𝐻𝑧
433.2
)

7. C3 and L2 are matching network capacitor provide additional ESD protection at ANT pin.
Demodulation bandwith section is as follows
SEL0 SEL1 BW@433.92MHz
0 0 1.625kHz
1 0 3.25kHz
0 1 6.5kHz
1 1 13kHz
𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑂𝑆𝐶 =
𝐹( 𝑅𝐹)
32 +
1.1
12
To operate the MICRF211 with min offset, crystal frequency should be specified with 10pF
(specified by manufacture) loading capacitance.
component value
L1 24nH
L2 39nH
C1 1.5pF
C2 5.6pF
C3 0.1micro farad
C4 0.1micro farad
C5 4.7micro farad
Crystal Oscillator 13.52MHz
Figure 5 Transmitter side

8. Component value
R1 100
R2 200
R3 6k8
R4 4k7
C1 470pF
C2 3Pf
C3 7pF
C4 470pF
C5 470pF
L1 27nH
L2 68nH
TRANSISTOR 2N3375

9. Remote control software program flowchart Receiver side software program flowchart
Figure 2 Flow charts for software programs for transmitter and receiver microcontrollers

10. Figure 7 Schematic circuit for receiver switchboard
Figure 8 schematic circuit for the remote control

11. Figure 9 PCB schematic for receiver switchboard (10x16)cm dimension
Figure 10 PCB layout for remote control (13x8.7)cm dimension

12. Figure 11 The remote/ transmitter
Figure 12 The receiver (remote switch board)

13. CONCLUSION
I have succeeded to transmit information up to 70 meters on open space with accurate and secure
algorithms but also transmission of information signals on area covered by tall buildings up 50
meters. I have faced a power fan out problem during interconnection of various microchips to
make the device work in the real environment power specification has to be considered as prime
factor hence low power microchips and integrated circuits must be used.
I have found this project extremely useful and have learnt alot from it. I have not only obtained
amount of technical knowledge but have also picked up valuable life skills.
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