Cover Story
Taking the complexity out of connectivity for IoT applications
Nick Stone, field application engineer
Connectivity is now a prerequisite for the majority of electronic products to enable the smart features demanded by today’s consumers. Bluetooth is an extremely popular option, as it operates in the same unlicensed 2.4GHz frequency band anywhere in the world and is compatible with a vast range of consumer electronics devices especially smartphones. The latest Bluetooth Low Energy standard maintains the wide interoperability with Classic Bluetooth, now pervasive in all of our smartphones, but offers dramatically reduced power consumption and extended range at a lower cost for a much wider adoption in our daily life. However, before a wireless product can be put on the market, it needs to be certified, a process that can be fraught, complex, expensive and time consuming. Fortunately, wireless module and System-on-Chip (SoC) based solutions for BLE and other standards are now readily available, often complete with the required radio certifications. These solutions eliminate the need for radio design expertise for the integration as well as removing much of the qualification process allowing developers to concentrate their efforts on the features of the end device. Nick Stone, field application engineer at Anglia, introduces the portfolio of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) SoC and modules from STMicroelectronics which allow a much faster time-to- market and help make significant engineering cost savings.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
integration in vehicles. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is interoperable with classic Bluetooth and can communicate with smartphones and similar devices. It is also optimised for very low power allowing it to be integrated into battery powered applications such as IoT sensor nodes which demand long service life from a primary battery power source. This opens BLE to applications from which classic Bluetooth is excluded, such as Industrial (remote device configuration), Smart Home (sensor control and monitoring), Wearables and Hearables, enhancing and improving the user experience.
T
he Bluetooth wireless standard has become ubiquitous and is now familiar in a wide range of consumer applications from fitness bands through to handsfree phone
on the Arm Cortex-M0+ core. These processors are available as discrete devices, offering customers maximum design flexibility. However, STMicroelectronics also offers these devices as pre-integrated modules, giving customers much easier integration and a greatly reduced qualification process. Also, for more streamlined applications, the lightweight BlueNRG portfolio from STMicroelectronics offers a spectrum of cost effective BLE 5.2 solutions from the basic network processor to single-core ultra-low- power Arm Cortex-M0+ Wireless SoC application processors and corresponding pre-certified modules giving designers greater flexibility to meet the demands of the application.
I will start by describing the processors in the STMicroelectronics range, and then go on to discuss the associated module options available.
Bluetooth Low Energy - System- on-Chip (SoC)
The STMicroelectronics BlueNRG range of SoC devices are available in four variants allowing users to select the right product according to their existing hardware architecture. The first and most basic of these is the BlueNRG-2N device which is a Network processor (external host required), this implementation allows designers to leverage software and minimize deployment risks, by just adding BLE functionality on top of an existing product via a basic UART or SPI-to- BLE bridge. More importantly, the dual-chip partitioning allows users to tailor the processing, memory and I/O requirements of the application by easily scaling MCU capabilities thanks to a decoupled radio sub-system. The next two device families in the
STMicroelectronics has a comprehensive offering for BLE. The STM32WB line of Microcontrollers offers integrated BLE application processors based on Arm Cortex- M4 core and BLE network processors based
8 October 2021 Components in Electronics
portfolio, BlueNRG-1 and BlueNRG-2 do not require an external processor to host the application as they come with an embedded and fully programmable Arm Cortex-M0 with 160kB and 256kB of non-volatile memory respectively as well as fully featured I/O peripherals. The fourth and most recent device, BlueNRG-LP, represents the 3rd generation of BlueNRG portfolio and offers an ultra-low- power SoC with best-in-class features of BLE 5.2 certified radio supporting up to 2Mbits/s (faster data transfer), Coded PHY (longer- range) and Enhanced Attribute Protocol, offering faster pairing capabilities, as well as lowest power consumption for longer battery life. The BlueNRG-LP SoC comes with 256kB of embedded non-volatile memory and is the
most energy-efficient product in the portfolio. The BlueNRG portfolio comes fully BLE 5.2 certified and is offered in various packages: QFN32, QFN48 with extended I/O capabilities or WLCSP for miniaturized and size constrained applications. Figure 1 provides a simple overview of the BlueNRG SoC portfolio.
Bluetooth Low Energy - modules These devices form the centrepiece of the STMicroelectronics range of pre-certified BLE modules which greatly simplify connectivity adoption in every design. The modules require no expertise in Radio Frequency and are ready-to-use products enabling wireless connected solutions.
STMicroelectronics family of BlueNRG modules are Bluetooth SIG End-Product certified and have obtained pre-certification across major worldwide regions. The modules are suitable for operation in industrial environments up to +85 °C and are included in STMicroelectronics 10-year longevity program, this gives developers the confidence to design the BlueNRG modules into industrial applications which have typical service lives of many years, often decades, without the issue of expensive and time- consuming regular hardware redesigns. The BlueNRG modules are available in two variants, the BlueNRG-M0 (network processor) and BlueNRG-M2 (programmable SoC with featured I/O peripherals). The BlueNRG-M0 modules are built around the BlueNRG-MS network processor chip,
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