Beyond the Wires 16
connectivity without wires. It offers affordability, low power
consumption, flexibility, a wide variety of profiles that
simplify implementation, and unlicensed operation in the
2.4GHz frequency band. The Bluetooth SIG is committed
to the future of the technology and continues to introduce
improvements such as new and valuable profiles. There is
also a large pool of expertise, including test houses and
software developers.
When it comes to product development, choosing the
right place to start is important and can influence the
performance and cost of the end product, as well as the
time to market and future flexibility to scale and adapt the
design to meet evolving market demands.
There are many options, and one of the first considerations
regards hardware design and the skills available to complete
the RF system. RF design is notoriously difficult, mainly
due to antenna matching, and circuit layout, in particular, is
known to be time-consuming and demands considerable
specialist expertise to get right. Engineers may be working
with an existing product built for wired communication using
a standard such as USB, challenged to upgrade to wireless
for greater user freedom and convenience. Its heart may
already contain an STM32 microcontroller, as this is one of
the world's most popular Arm
®
Cortex
®
-M MCU families.
So, the team could be heavily invested in code, tools, and
hardware for STM32 development.
STMicroelectronics has made it possible to sidestep many
of the hardware design issues and continue working within
the STM32 ecosystem by introducing the STM32WB and
STM32WBA series of wireless system-on-chips (SoCs).
Using these devices also connects developers with the
ST community and online resources, including wiki pages,
training materials, application notes, and code samples,
which help developers reach their project goals.
ST's Wireless Microcontrollers
Simplify Development
The STM32WB and STM32WBA series SoCs combine
a microcontroller capable of running the Bluetooth
communication stack and the application code while also
integrating a Bluetooth Low Energy radio on the same
silicon. Also, ST can provide an STM32WB or STM32WBA
companion chip that integrates the impedance matching
and filtering circuitry needed to connect the antenna,
helping avoid additional RF-circuit design challenges.
In some use cases, it is critical to ensure that both
the radio link and the application can ensure real-time
performance. Examples include certain types of medical
monitors or motor drives. To address this, the STM32WB55
SoCs comprise dual-core SoCs conceived to handle
such situations. They contain an Arm Cortex-M0+ core
dedicated to the radio layer, while an Arm Cortex-M4 with
floating-point unit and DSP extensions handles application
processing. A memory protection unit (MPU) enhances
application security, and the microcontroller contains
mechanisms for managing shared and exclusive resources
between the two cores.
To provide another example, applicable to wearables
applications, the STM32WBA52 allows up to +10dBm
output power to facilitate connecting to the device even if
it is far from the consumer. This MCU is an ultra-low-power
platform that leverages ST's 40nm process technology and
contains an Arm Cortex-M33 processor running at 100MHz,
which ensures high performance.
BlueNRG-LP
BLUETOOTH
®
Low Energy
Wireless SoC
Learn More
