The SPIRIT1 is a very low-power RF transceiver, intended for RF wireless applications in the sub-1 GHz band. It is designed to operate both in the license-free ISM and SRD frequency bands at 169, 315, 433, 868, and 915 MHz, but can also be programmed to operate at other additional frequencies in the 300-348 MHz, 387-470 MHz, and 779-956 MHz bands. The air data rate is programmable from 1 to 500 kbps, and the SPIRIT1 can be used in systems with channel spacing of 12.5/25 kHz, complying with the EN 300 220 standard. It uses a very small number of discrete external components and integrates a configurable baseband modem, which supports data management, modulation, and demodulation. The data management handles the data in the proprietary fully programmable packet format also allows the M-Bus standard compliance format (all performance classes).

However, the SPIRIT1 can perform cyclic redundancy checks on the data as well as FEC encoding/decoding on the packets. The SPIRIT1 provides an optional automatic acknowledgement, retransmission, and timeout protocol engine in order to reduce overall system costs by handling all the high-speed link layer operations.

Moreover, the SPIRIT1 supports an embedded CSMA/CA engine. An AES 128-bit encryption co-processor is available for secure data transfer. The SPIRIT1 fully supports antenna diversity with an integrated antenna switching control algorithm. The SPIRIT1 supports different modulation schemes: 2-FSK, GFSK, OOK, ASK, and MSK. Transmitted/received data bytes are buffered in two different three-level FIFOs (TX FIFO and RX FIFO), accessible via the SPI interface for host processing.