Silicon Labs Targets Low-Power Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy IoT with Its New SiWx917Y Modules
Pre-certified modules, drawing as little as 20μA in sleep with Target Wake Time (TWT) enabled, available now.
Silicon Labs has announced the launch of its latest Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 Low Energy (BLE) parts, the SiWx917Y module family — delivering, it says, ultra-low-power wireless connectivity for battery-powered Internet of Things (IoT) projects and more.
"Wi-Fi for IoT has evolved significantly, creating exciting opportunities for innovation. To help end device makers accelerate their full potential, we developed the SiWx917Y Wi-Fi 6 modules," says Silicon Labs' Irvind Ghai of the company's latest launch. "These pre-certified modules offer a streamlined solution, enabling manufacturers to easily integrate cutting-edge connectivity into their devices and focus on actual solution differentiation while reducing development costs."
The SiWx917Y module family, building on the company's Series 2 platform, include a single Arm Cortex-M4 processor with floating-point unit running at up to 180MHz, 672kB of static RAM (SRAM) shared between the Cortex-M4 and the network processor, up to 2MB of embedded pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) and 16MB of external PSRAM, and up to 8MB of embedded flash and 16MB of external flash. The modules include up to 43 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, a 16-channel 12-bit analog to digital converter (ADC), 10-bit digital to analog converter (DAC), and buses including USART, UART, SPI, I2C, I2S, and SDIO 2.0 Secondary.
It's the connectivity that SiLabs is showcasing, though: the modules include single-band IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ax Wi-Fi 6 support with 20MHz channels and throughputs up to 86Mb/s, plus battery-friendly features including individual target wakeup time (iTWT), broadcasts TWT (bTWT), and intra-PPDU power saving. A Bluetooth 5.4 Low Energy (BLE) Radio is also included, offering 1Mb/s, 2Mb/s, and 125-500kb/s long-range data rate options and supporting eight peripheral and two central connections. Both radios are under the control of a dedicated communications processor, freeing the primary core for other work — and can also work in co-processor mode, connected to an external microcontroller or microprocessor.
The SiWx917Y modules are available to order and sample from Silicon Labs now; a development kit is available in the form of a $40 SiWG917Y module, with 8MB of flash, to be connected to the SiLabs Wireless Pro Kit Mainboard — purchased separately.