RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                          Rev1.1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PRELIMINARY 
DATA SHEET 
Revision: 1.1 
Release date: 10 Feb 2017 
RDA5981C 
IEEE802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 1 of 16 
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                          Rev1.1 
1.  General Description 
RDA5981C  is  a  low  power  MCU  with  IEEE802.11b/g/n  MAC/PHY/radio  integrated 
into  one  chip.  TCP/IP  protocols  along  with  SSL  are  included,  providing  improved  link 
robustness, extended range, and increased performance. For the highest integration level, the 
required board space has been minimized and customer cost has been reduced. Manufacturers 
can easily and fast integrate RDA5981C on their product to enable a rapid time to market.   
RDA5981C uses a compact 5×5mm²  QFN package, 0.4mm pitch QFN-40. 
1.1 WLAN Features 
  CMOS single-chip fully-integrated radio, 
PHY and MAC 
  2.4GHz  IEEE  802.11b/g/n 
  Internal  PA,  LNA 
  Data  rates  up  to  150Mbps  with  20/40
MHz  bandwidth 
  Dynamic  TX  power  saving 
  Low  power  listen  mode 
  Fast  AGC  control 
  Support  WPS,  WMM 
  Support  WPA,  WPA2,  WEP,  TKIP,   
CCMP 
  Support STA, softAP, P2P, STA+softAp, 
STA+P2P 
  Support  A-MPDU,  A-MSDU,  HT-BA 
  Light  Weight  TCP/IP  protocol 
1.2 MCU Features 
  Integrated ARM-CM4 MCU, Maximum 
clock Frequency 160MHz 
  Integrated  MPU  and  mbed  uvisor 
supported to isolate security domains 
  Up to 448KBytes internal sram for WIFI 
  Support external psram interface 
  Integrated 32Mbit SPI flash in package 
  Integrated  a  bunch  of  configurable 
level/edge 
external 
GPIOs  with 
trigger/wakeup 
protocol and application developments 
  Integrated UART×2/I2S×2/I2C×1 
  SPI  /  UART  /  USB2.0  interface  allows 
simple interfacing to host device 
  UART with an AT command set 
  Integrated  hardware  crypto  accelerator 
AES/RSA 
  Integrated true random number generator 
(TRNG) and CRC accelerator 
/PWM×8/SPI×4/SDMMC×1/USB2.0×1 
  Integrated 2 channels application ADC   
  Integrated  watchdog  and  low  power 
timer   
  16×16 bits eFuse configuration 
  Support freeRTOS/mbedOS5.1 
 
 
 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 2 of 16 
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                        Rev1.1                                   
1.3 Applications 
  IOT devices 
  Smart home 
  Wi-Fi speaker/home audio 
  Smart watch 
 
 
 
 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 3 of 16 
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                        Rev1.1                                   
2.  Block Description 
      Figure2-1 RDA5981C Block Diagram 
 
 
 
 
 
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or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 4 of 16 
UARTCortexM4FPU/MPUOn-chip ROMOn-chip RAM802.11 b/g/nHT20/40MAC/BB802.11 b/g/nHT20/40RF/PA/LNAPMU/RTChardware crypto accelerator AES/RSA/TRNGIRADCGPIOI2SI2CSPISDMMCUSB2.0PWMPSRAM_IFSPIFLASH_IF
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                        Rev1.1                                   
3.  Functional Description 
3.1 Memory System 
RDA5981C integrates ROM, internal RAM and SPI nor flash to provide 
 
applications with a variety of memory requirements. 
3.1.1 Memory Map 
Table 3-1 RDA5981C Memory Map 
Component 
Address Range 
Size 
comments 
MEMORY 
BOOT_ROM    0x0000_0000-0x0000_FFFF 
I_SRAM 
0x0010_0000-0x0011_FFFF 
D_SRAM 
0x0018_0000-0x001A_7FFF 
0x1000_0000-0x13FF_EFFF    data 
0x1400_0000 - 0x15FF_FFFF    FLASH data 
32M 
0x1800_0000-0x1FFF_FFFF    I-cache 
 
PSRAM 
FLASH 
I-cache 
LOGIC 
SCU 
GPIO 
0x40000000-0x40000FFF 
0x40001000-0x40001FFF 
TIMER 
0x40002000-0x40002FFF 
I2C_master 
0x40003000-0x40003FFF 
PWM 
0x40004000-0x40004FFF 
PSRAM_CFG  0x40005000-0x40005FFF 
SDMMC 
0x40006000-0x40006FFF 
I2C   
0x40010000-0x40010FFF 
UART1 
0x40012000-0x40012FFF 
AHB_EXIF 
0x40013000-0x40013FFF   
WIFI_PA 
0x40020000-0x40021FFF 
WIFI_CE 
0x40022000-0x40022FFF 
WLAN_MON  0x40024000-0x40027FFF   
SDIO 
USB 
0x40030000-0x40030FFF 
0x40031000-0x40031FFF 
MEMC0 
0x40100000-0x4017FFFF 
UART2 
0x40180000-0x40180FFF 
DMA_CFG 
0x40181000-0x40181FFF 
64K 
128K 
160K 
64M 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
4K 
8K 
4K 
20K 
4K 
4K 
512k 
4K 
4K 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 5 of 16 
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                        Rev1.1                                   
3.1.2 Internal ROM 
 
RDA5981C integrates internal ROM to provide basic functions: 
 
eFuse functions 
  USB/SPI interface initialization 
  MCU/Wi-Fi mode initialization 
3.1.3 Internal RAM 
 
RDA5981C integrates: 
 
 
192K Bytes SRAM for user   
32K Bytes icache 
3.1.4 SPI Nor FLASH 
  RDA5981C supports standard SPI mode and SPI-Quad mode and integrated 32Mbit 
flash in package. 
3.2 GPIO Characteristics 
Table 3-2 GPIO Configurable Function Summary Table 
3.3 UART Interface Characteristics 
  RDA5981C  supports  2  UARTs  with  configurable  baud  rate  from  1200bps  to 
4Mbps.   
 
 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 6 of 16 
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                        Rev1.1                                   
3.4 I2S Interface Characteristics 
RDA5981C  supports  2  I2S 
the  I2S  master  BCLK  supports 
 
96/192/384/512/ 44.1/88.2KHz. The interface supports 16/32 bit per channel, the data 
format  can  be  configured  as  16/20/24bit  per  channel  or  decided  by  software  (up  to 
24bit per channel). 
interface; 
3.5 I2C Interface Characteristics 
RDA5981C  supports  1  I2C  standard  interface.  It  supports  master  or  slave  I2C 
 
operation and 3 standard speed modes: 
 
 
 
1. Standard mode (<100Kb/s) 
2. Fast mode (<400Kb/s) 
3. High-speed mode (<3.4Mb/s) 
3.6 PWM Interface Characteristics 
RDA5981C  supports  8  PWM  interfaces.  Period  and  Duty  of  PWM  is 
 
programmable.  The  Duty  of  PWM/PWT/PWL  can  be  flexible  configured  between 
0~100.  The  accurate  of  duty  is  1%.The  period  are  programmable,  the  software  can 
select different clock to product long Period. 
Table 3-3 PWM Period & Duty 
Name   
Number 
Duty 
PWM 
PWT 
LPG 
PWL 
4 
1 
1 
2 
1~100% 
1~100% 
<25% 
Period 
5us-256s 
5us-4s 
<2s 
1~100% 
- 
 
Standard PWM 
Standard PWM 
The  wave has a short pull 
up in a long period 
The  wave is non-periodic, 
use for screen background 
light 
3.7 SPI Interface Characteristics 
  RDA5981C  supports  4  SPI  interfaces,  master  only.  The  SPI  clock  rate  is 
programmable and up to 20MHz. The data length can be configured by the software, 
the max data length is 64bit. 
 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 7 of 16 
RDA5981C IEEE 802.11b/g/n MCU WIFI                                                                        Rev1.1                                   
3.8 SDMMC Interface Characteristics 
 
RDA5981C supports 1 SDMMC interface.   
3.9 USB Interface Characteristics 
      RDA5981C supports USB interface. 
 
The information contained herein is the exclusive property of RDA and shall not be distributed, reproduced, 
or disclosed in whole or in part without prior written permission of RDA.                                              Page 8 of 16