MCUs combine low power, high performing RF

The microcontrollers offer low power (up to 20 years of battery life) and high-performing RF (city-wide coverage of over 20km) to help engineers easily add ultra-low power, long-range connectivity to Internet of Things (IoT) and energy-harvesting designs.      

The devices are a combination of a flexible, very low power RF transceiver with a powerful 48MHz ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller in a platform that supports multiple physical layers and RF standards. A dedicated ARM Cortex-M0 radio controller handles low-level RF protocol commands that are stored in ROM or RAM, ensuring ultra-low power and flexibility.

The devices offer extended battery life with a standby mode that draws just 0.6 μA and an active current of 1.2 mA (plus 25.5 μA/MHz). A 16-bit sensor controller can run autonomously from the system, maximising the main microcontroller’s standby time and reducing power consumption.      

The microcontrollers are available in a 48-pin 7mm × 7mm package with 32, 64, or 128 kBytes of flash, 20 kBytes of SRAM, and an 8 kByte cache. The devices operate from a wide supply voltage range from 1.8V to 3.8V and include 30 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins and I²C, I²S, dual SSI, and UART interfaces.

The microcontrollers are supported by an assortment of development and evaluation tools to help engineers debug software and design RF solutions for applications such as building and factory automation, alarms and security, smart grids, and wireless sensor networks.