Renesas Announces Its First Arm Cortex-M Microcontrollers with Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy Capabilities

Based on a standard only released in July this year, these early Bluetooth 5.3 chips will include SDR capabilities for future updates.

Embedded specialist Renesas has announced its first wireless microcontroller chips to support the Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy specification — with samples expected to arrive early next year.

"We are committed to providing the best performance, ease-of-use, and the latest features on the market," claims Roger Wendelken, senior vice president for Renesas' Internet of Things (IoT) and infrastructure arm. "By offering early, robust support for the Bluetooth 5.3 LE specification, we will enable our RA customers to be first to market with their next-generation products."

When Wendelken says "early," he's not joking: The Bluetooth 5.3 specification was only publicly released in July this year, offering an upgrade on previous versions by adding filtering capabilities outside the Bluetooth host stack and sub-rated connections which offer boosted switching times for implementations which need to send bursty traffic.

Naturally, the new parts - built around 32-bit Arm Cortex-M IP, also integrated the features introduced in Bluetooth 5.1 and 5.2 — including support for direction finding and isochronous channels for stereo audio transmission. Renesas also promises, but has yet to detail, an element of software defined radio (SDR) in the new parts — meaning that it should be possible to migrate to future Bluetooth specification versions without replacing hardware.

The new microcontrollers, which will be available in the company's semi-custom Winning Combinations ecosystem, are to be supported by Renesas' Flexible Software Package (FSP) development environment and work with the Renesas QE for Bluetooth LE plug-in.

Renesas has not yet revealed full specifications and pricing for the parts, which will enter the company's Renesas Advanced (RA) range, but has confirmed it will begin sampling the parts in the first quarter of 2022. More information on the current RA family is available on the Renesas website.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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