A Bluetooth chip uses less power and combines wireless communication, security, and functions for battery-powered devices.
Silicon Labs has introduced the BG2B, a Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) system-on-chip (SoC) that combines wireless connectivity, security, and peripherals in one chip. It is designed for battery-powered IoT devices such as sensors, asset tags, smart locks, wearables, and electronic shelf labels.
The BG2B is the lowest-power Bluetooth LE device in Silicon Labs’ portfolio. Compared with the company’s previous lowest-power Bluetooth LE SoC, it reduces MCU active current by 14% to 15%. It also uses less current in Bluetooth receive mode and can operate at 1.1 µA in EM2 sleep mode while retaining RAM.
The chip uses a dual-output DC-DC power architecture and a multi-core design to manage power across active, receive, and sleep modes. This is intended to extend battery life in IoT devices that use sensors, processing, and wireless connectivity.
The SoC also reduces energy use during ranging through shorter Channel Sounding step timings, lower active current, and lower Bluetooth LE receive current.
The CAN-FD interface allows Bluetooth LE and CAN-FD to be used on the same chip. This can support wireless diagnostics and monitoring in commercial vehicles, fleet management systems, industrial equipment, and maintenance systems without a separate Bluetooth bridge.
The LED boost and four-channel LED sink can remove the need for an external LED driver in electronic shelf labels, smart retail devices, and battery-powered products with RGBW LEDs. The SoC is intended for applications such as asset tracking, electronic shelf labels, smart home devices, industrial monitoring, vehicle diagnostics, secure ranging, wireless sensors, smart locks, remote controls, and wearables.
“Bluetooth LE is moving beyond basic connectivity into secure ranging, proximity awareness, and location-aware experiences, while customers still need the low power, small form factor, and cost efficiency that made Bluetooth the foundation of battery-powered IoT,” said Daniel Cooley, SVP and CTO, Silicon Labs. “BG2B brings these requirements together in a single platform, combining our lowest-power Bluetooth LE architecture to date with advanced Channel Sounding, Secure Vault™ High security, and integrated peripherals that help customers build more capable, connected products with fewer external components.”
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