These new SOCs are designed to meet the market demand for high-volume, battery-powered IoT products. They also provide developers with a Bluetooth connectivity solution that supports the new Bluetooth 5.2 specification, Bluetooth direction finding and Bluetooth mesh.
The new SoC solutions are:
- EFR32BG22C112 – this SoC targets high-volume, cost-sensitive applications, providing access to 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps Bluetooth PHYs, along with a 38.4 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 core, 18 GPIOs and 352 kB of flash memory with radio characteristics of 0 dBm transmit (TX) and an industry-leading -99 dBm receive (RX) (1M PHY) sensitivity.
- EFR32BG22C222 – this targets applications requiring more compute power (with a 76.8 MHz M33 core), more I/O’s (26 GPIOs) and higher TX power (+6 dBm).
- EFR32BG22C224 – this provides IQ sampling for direction finding applications and access to 125 kB and 500 kB Bluetooth LE Coded PHYs, which can increase RX sensitivity to -106 dBm. The SoC increases operating temperature to +125 °C and extends flash memory up to 512 kB to support applications requiring direction finding capabilities or low-power mesh nodes.
Silicon Labs designed the BG22 SoCs to meet Bluetooth Low Energy requirements and growth projections for the billions of Bluetooth-enabled IoT devices expected to ship in the next few years.
The BG22 family’s combination of ultra-low transmit and receive power (3.6 mA TX at 0 dBm, 2.6 mA RX) and a high-performance, low-power Arm Cortex-M33 core (27 µA/MHz active, 1.2 µA sleep) deliver energy efficiency that can extend coin cell battery life up to ten years.
Target applications include Bluetooth mesh low-power nodes, smart door locks, personal healthcare and fitness devices. Asset tracking tags, beacons and indoor navigation also benefit from the SoCs’ Bluetooth Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) capabilities and sub-one-meter location accuracy.
The SoCs are planned to be available in March. Developers can download network analyser and energy profiler tools, Bluetooth stacks, demos and mobile apps on Silicon Labs’ website.