Silicon Labs Unveils BG22 Bluetooth 5.2 SoCs, Boasts of 10-Year Battery Life From a Button Cell
Launching in three flavors, Silicon Labs' latest Wireless Gecko Series 2 parts boast plenty of features at a low power draw.
Silicon Labs has announced a family of Bluetooth 5.2 systems-on-chips (SoCs) which, it claims, can run for 10 years on a simple coin cell — while offering Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Bluetooth Mesh, and sub-one-meter direction-finding features: the EFR32BG22 (BG22) range.
"As the leader in low-power wireless technology for the IoT, we've significantly strengthened our offering for existing and growing Bluetooth markets. Our secure Bluetooth solution enables our customers to reduce BOM cost, power and time-to-market," explains Matt Johnson, senior vice president and general manager of IoT products at Silicon Labs. "We were first to market with Bluetooth Mesh and Bluetooth 5.1 direction finding, and we continue to lead the industry with new innovations including Bluetooth 5.2. Our new BG22 SoCs give developers the right balance of features, security and performance at low cost points to help drive adoption of Bluetooth across a wide array of IoT products."
The BG22 portfolio includes ultra-low-power Bluetooth transmit and receive functionality - 3.6mA transmission at 0dBm and 2.6mA reception, the company claims — alongside an Arm Cortex-M33 processor core drawing 27µA per megahertz while active and 1.2µA in the lowest sleep state. All together, the SoC is said to run for up to 10 years of active use on a single button-cell battery.
Silicon Labs has announced three initial models in the BG22 family. The EFR32BG22C112 is a high-volume low-cost part with 1Mb/s and 2Mb/s Bluetooth PHYs, 38.4MHz Arm Cortex-M33 core, 18 general-purpose input/output pins (GPIOs), and 352kB of flash memory; the EFR32BG22C222 ups the Arm core to 76.8MHz, increases the GPIO pin count to 26, and increases the transmit power to +6dBm from 0dBm; finally, the EFR32BG22C224 adds IQ sampling for direction finding alongside access to Bluetooth PHYs coded for 125kB/s and 500kB/s - increasing receive sensitivity — while boosting flash memory to 512kB and operating the maximum operating temperature to 125°C (around 257°F).
Volume pricing for the parts has been quoted as low as $0.52 per unit, with EFR32BG22 SoC starter kits and Thunderboard EFR32BG22 evaluation kits due to launch in March starting at $19.99. More information on the range is available from the Silicon Labs website.