The new Wireless Gecko SoC helps developers solve multi-protocol IoT design challenges

Silicon Labs has announced a major expansion of its Wireless Gecko system-on-chip (SoC) product family, making it easier for developers at all levels to add multi-protocol switching capabilities to increasingly complex IoT applications. The new EFR32xG12 SoCs support a wider range of multi-protocol, multi-band application scenarios for home automation, connected lighting, wearables, and the Industrial Internet of Things with superior RF performance, enhanced secure cryptoaccelerators, greater storage capacity, capacitive touch controllers on chip, and low-power peripherals and sensor interfaces.

Bruce Bharat, Director of Marketing for Connected Control products at Acuity Brands Lighting, a market leader in indoor and outdoor lighting, control and energy management solutions, said: "Multi-protocol connectivity brings more advanced capabilities that help us simplify networked lighting control design while meeting consumer demand for easy installation and online updates to extend product life." "Silicon Labs' Wireless Gecko platform provides us with multi-protocol SoCs, modules, robust software protocol stacks, and powerful development tools to help speed our network-controlled LED devices and control products to market."

Wireless Gecko SoC supports zigbee® and Thread mesh networking, Bluetooth® 5, and private wireless protocols. Silicon Labs has optimized its wireless protocol stack architecture to enable efficient switching between different network protocols. For example, device manufacturers can now deploy and configure a device via Bluetooth on a smartphone using a single chip, and then connect it to dozens or even hundreds of end nodes by joining zigbee or Thread mesh networks.

Daniel Cooley, senior vice president and general manager of iot products at Silicon Labs, said: "The EFR32 Wireless Gecko product family is the most versatile and feature-rich multi-protocol platform available today. "With new hardware and software with advanced multi-protocol connectivity, we continue to enhance the Wireless Gecko platform to meet the real-world needs of IoT products."

Superior RF performance and safety

The Wireless Gecko family features the highest output power in the multi-protocol SoC market (up to +19dBm), reducing system size, cost and complexity by eliminating the usual need for external power amplifiers. In addition, the EFR32xG12 SoC has excellent reception sensitivity in the 2.4GHz band (-102.7dBm for zigbee and Thread, -95dBm for Bluetooth Low Energy), as well as enhanced sub-GHz performance for proprietary protocol applications. The combination of the highest RF output power and the best reception sensitivity provides better wireless transmission distance, higher reliability, and longer battery life for IoT applications such as smart meters.

The EFR32BG12 Blue Gecko SoC has a Bluetooth PHY with a 2Mbps rate, which provides sufficient throughput for running applications that are compatible with the Bluetooth 5 protocol stack. The Bluetooth 5 standard supports 4 times the transmission distance, 2 times the speed, 8 times the broadcast performance, and enhances coexistence with other wireless IoT protocols.

To ensure IoT security, the EFR32xG12 SoC includes a second on-chip security accelerator dedicated to multi-protocol radios and NIST-certified true random number generators (TRNGS). This additional hardware encryption module runs the latest security algorithms with higher performance and lower power compared to traditional software implementations.

More storage and peripherals

Compared to the previous generation Wireless Gecko products, the EFR32xG12 SoC offers four times the capacity of flash memory (up to 1,024KB with dual-zone architecture) and eight times the capacity of RAM(up to 256KB). The significance of storage scaling makes it easier to develop complex, feature rich IoT applications that support multiple protocol stacks, real-time operating systems (such as Micrium OS), backup firmware, and over-the-air firmware (OTA) updates to extend the life of IoT products.

The SoC's extended range of digital and analog peripherals gives developers greater design flexibility and the ability to connect additional components, such as sensors. On-chip autonomous capacitive sensing controllers provide direct support for capacitive touch interfaces in IoT products, eliminating the cost and design complexity typically associated with off-chip controllers.