Software defined radio in microcontroller for Bluetooth 5.3
Renesas Electronics is developed a family of 32bit ARM-based microcontrollers for early next year that will support the Bluetooth 5.3 standard released earlier this year using software-defined radio (SDR).
Bluetooth 5.3 LE includes important new features, such as allowing receivers to filter out messages without involving the host stack to improve the receiver duty cycle. It also enables peripheral devices to provide preferred channels to a central device in order to improve throughput and reliability.
The standard also adds subrated connections that improve switching time between low and high duty cycle connections for applications that occasionally need to switch to burst traffic.
The direction-finding functionality introduced in Bluetooth 5.1 and the isochronous channels added in Bluetooth 5.2 for stereo audio transmission will also be supported in the new RA MCUs.
The SDR capabilities will allow customers to later migrate to new specification releases alongside ARM Cortex-M class cores. The RA4W1 Bluetooth 5.0 LE device introduced last year uses a 48MHz ARM Cortex-M4 core with 512kB Flash Memory and 96kB SRAM and 8kB Data Flash to store data as in EEPROM in a 7×7 mm QFN 56-pin package.
The new RA products will be supported by the RA family’s Flexible Software Package (FSP) for development of applications and the Renesas QE for Bluetooth LE plug-in, a dedicated Bluetooth profile and application development support tool as well as TrustZone security support.
“We are committed to providing the best performance, ease-of-use, and the latest features on the market,” said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President in Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. “By offering early, robust support for the Bluetooth 5.3 LE specification, we will enable our RA customers to be first to market with their next-generation products.”
Renesas is preparing to offer multiple reference designs using the Bluetooth 5.3 LE MCUs along with complementary analog, power and timing devices. Samples of the microcontrollers are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2022.
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