STMicroelectronics — BLUENRG-LP Wireless SoC

STMicroelectronics’ BlueNRG-LP is a programmable Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) system-on-chip (SoC) which operates at the very low power levels required to provide long run-times in wearable devices and other battery-operated products.

This wireless Bluetooth device can operate on a peak current of 3.4 mA when receiving, a peak Transmit current of 4.3 mA, just 0.6 µA in deep stop mode, and 10 nA in shut-down mode. It can be programmed to produce output power up to +8 dBm.

The BlueNRG-LP is ideal for devices which can take advantage of the increased data rate and range provided by version 5.2 of the Bluetooth LE specification. The BlueNRG-LP supports v5.2 features such as a 2 Mbits/s data rate, long-range mode, advertising extensions, channel selection algorithm #2, and GATT caching.

The SoC has an embedded 2.4 GHz RF radio, a 32-bit Arm® Cortex®-M0+ core which can operate at up to 64 MHz, and a BlueNRG core accelerator for time-critical operations. The SoC also integrates a range of peripherals, and embeds a 12-bit ADC with a 16-bit decimation filter. This enables measurement of up to eight external sources via DMA channels and up to three internal sources, including battery monitoring and a temperature sensor. An embedded RF balun, dc-dc converter, and capacitor-less crystal help to minimize the cost of the host system bill-of-materials.

The BlueNRG-LP enables point-to-point connectivity between devices as well as Bluetooth mesh networking for large device networks. The BlueNRG-LP can also be used for 2.4 GHz proprietary radio communication, making it suitable for ultra low-latency applications.