Silicon Labs BG2B is an ultra-low-power Arm Cortex-M33 Bluetooth 6 LE SoC with support for Channel Sounding, “Secure Vault High” security, and integrated CAN-FD and peripherals such as LED drivers and ADCs for smaller, longer-lasting IoT devices.

The company claims it’s the lowest-power Bluetooth LE device in its portfolio, with 1.1 µA EM2 sleep current with RAM retention, as well as 14%-15% lower MCU active current and lower Bluetooth receive current compared to Silicon Labs BG22/BG22L. The new microcontroller targets secure ranging, asset tracking, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), smart home, industrial monitoring, and vehicle diagnostics.

Silicon Labs BG2B specifications:

• CPU core – 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 @ 80 MHz with DSP instructions and floating-point unit (FPU)
• Memory – 64 kB or 128 kB SRAM
• Storage – 1016 kB flash
• Wireless – 2.4 GHz radio
  • Modulation Formats
    • OQPSK DSSS
    • 2 (G)FSK with fully configurable shaping
    • (G)MSK
  • Protocols
    • Bluetooth Low Energy 6
    • Channel Sounding with support for Mode 3, NADM, and Inline PCT
    • 2.4 GHz proprietary
  • Radio Performance
    • -102.1 dBm sensitivity @ 250 kbps O-QPSK DSSS
    • -106.8 dBm sensitivity @ 125 kbps GFSK
    • -99.0 dBm sensitivity @ 1 Mbps GFSK
    • -96.1 dBm sensitivity @ 2 Mbps GFSK
  • Tx power – Up to +8 dBm
• Peripherals
  • Digital I/Os
    • Up to 32x GPIO
    • 2x UART/SPI/SmartCard (ISO 7816)/IrDA/I2S
    • 1x EUSART/SPI
    • 2× I2C with SMBus support
    • 1x CAN FD
  • Analog
    • 2x 12-bit ADC up to1 Msps
    • Analog Comparator (ACMP)
    • Die temperature sensor with typical +/- 1.5 °C accuracy after single-point calibration
  • Audio – Digital microphone interface (PDM)
  • 2x Variable Resistive Load (VRL), switchable load on VREGVDD for measuring battery internal resistance and estimating remaining battery capacity
  • 4x adjustable constant-current LED sinks with built-in blink pattern generator and PWM brightness control
  • 8-channel DMA controller
  • 20-channel Peripheral Reflex System (PRS)
  • Timers
    • 3× 16-bit Timer/Counter with 3x Compare/Capture/PWM channels
    • 2× 32-bit Timer/Counter with 3x Compare/Capture/PWM channels
    • 32-bit Real Time Counter
    • 24-bit Low-Energy Timer for waveform generation
    • Watchdog Timer
• Security – Secure Vault High
  • Hardware Cryptographic Acceleration for AES128/192/256, ChaCha20-Poly1305, SHA-1, SHA-2/256/384/512, ECDSA+ECDH(P-192, P-256, P-384, P-521), Ed25519 and Curve25519, J-PAKE, PBKDF2
  • True Random Number Generator (TRNG)
  • Arm TrustZone
  • Secure Boot (Root of Trust Secure Loader)
  • Secure Debug Unlock
  • DPA Countermeasures
  • Secure Key Management with PUF
  • Anti-Tamper
  • Secure Attestation
  • Designed for PSA level 3 certification
• Misc
  • Precision Low-Frequency RC Oscillator to replace 32 kHz sleep crystal
  • RFSENSE with selective OOK mode
• Supply Voltage – 1.8 to 3.8 V DC
• Power Consumption
  • 3.1 mA Rx current (1 Mbps GFSK)
  • 4.1 mA Tx current @ 0 dBm output power
  • 11.06 mA TX current @ +8 dBm output power
  • 23 μA/MHz in Active Mode (EM0) at 80 MHz
  • 1.5 μA EM2 DeepSleep current (128 kB RAM retention and RTC running from LFXO)
  • 1.1 μA EM2 DeepSleep current (16 kB RAM retention and RTC running from LFXO)
  • 0.17 μA EM4 current
• Packages
  • QFN40 – 5 x 5 x 0.85 mm, 0.4 mm pitch
  • QFN48 – 6 x 6 x 0.85 mm, 0.4 mm pitch
• Temperature Range – -40 to +125°C

We have no information about software support, modules, and development kit, since it’s an early announcement. Ten different EFR32BG2B SKUs will be available, all supporting Bluetooth 6.x, direction finding, and 2.4 GHz proprietary, but some features are optional (LED sink, Channel Sounding, CAN Bus), and RAM capacity and the number of GPIOs vary.

A limited number of BG2B SoCs are currently available through an early customer engagement program. However, the official launch is planned for 2027.  A few more details may be found on the product page and a blog post.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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