STMicro Announces World's First Die-Integrated LoRa System-on-Chip: the STM32WLE5

STMicroelectronics has announced what it is, somewhat questionably, referring to as the "world's first LoRa SoC," the STM32WLE5 — designed for long-range, low-power wide area network projects.

While STMicro's STM32WLE5 isn't the first system-on-chip to integrate LoRa connectivity, the company's world-first claim comes from the fact that it's the first to place it on-die rather than simply within the same package as the main SoC hardware. The Semtech SX1262 sub-gigahertz radio thus finds itself closer to the heart of the design than in its competitors, which could potentially spell good news for power draw.

The STM32WL includes an Arm Cortex-M4 processor with digital signal processor (DSP) and memory protection unit (MPU) running at up to 48MHz, up to 256kB of flash memory, and up to 64kB of RAM. The radio supports LoRa modulation alongside (G)FSK, (G)MSK, and BPSK, and works from 150MHz to 960MHz with one output running up to 22dBm and the other, optimised for consumption, running at up to 15dBm.

The security side of the design includes AES 128- and 256-bit acceleration, a true hardware random number generator, private key accelerator, and a 96-bit ID unique to each chip. Connectivity includes two SPIs, three I2Cs, one ultra-low-power UART, two USART, seven 16- and 32-bit timers, one each of analogue to digital and digital to analogue converters (ADC and DAC) at a 12-bit resolution, an on-board temperature sensor, and two ULP comparators, plus up to 43 general-purpose input/outputs (GPIOs).

More information on the new part is available on STMicro's website.