The ultra low-power MCUs are integrated with Arm Cortex cores that allow long-distance communication for IoT applications
Giving designers more flexibility to target cost-conscious market opportunities are the new dual-core multi-protocol microcontrollers (MCUs) STM32WB35 and STM32WB30 Value Line by STMicroelectronics. The new devices are suited to large-scale IoT applications such as fleet and resource management, as well as asset monitoring and tracking.
The extremely low-power MCUs integrate a 2.4GHz radio managed by a dedicated Arm Cortex-M0+ core, with a 64MHz Arm Cortex-M4 for the main application for permitting uninterrupted real-time performance. They support Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0, Zigbee 3.0, OpenThread (IEEE 802.15.4) protocols and concurrent modes, with built-in security features. The STM32WB35 and STM32WB30 Value Line devices include up to 512 KBytes of integrated Flash memory and up to of 96 KBytes of SRAM, with a Quad-SPI interface for connecting to external high-speed memory.
The new devices are pin-compatible with the existing STM32WB5x devices along with sharing common MCU features, giving users the flexibility to easily scale and migrate their designs. A rich selection of analogue peripherals, digital interfaces and fast I/Os are offered, many of which are 5V tolerant. The MCUs integrate:
- Radio balun
- USB2.0 Full Speed with a crystal-less oscillator
- Embedded capacitors for 32MHz crystal
- DC-DC step-down converter to minimise Bill of Materials (BoM) and platform footprint.
Ensuring reliability and security
Outstanding RF performance, with a programmable output power of up to +6dBm and with a 102dBm link budget ensures reliable connectivity over longer distances, while ultra-low power consumption extends battery runtime.
All STM32WB products are supported in the STM32Cube ecosystem, an exhaustive software development suite that offers a combination of embedded software libraries and software tools addressing all the needs of a complete project development cycle.
With a focus on security, the STM32WB MCUs integrate:
- Secure firmware installation (SFI)
- Hardware encryption for the application and radio stacks
- Hardware public-key authority (PKA)
- Hardware accelerators for state-of-the-art cryptographic algorithms
- Support for secure Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates.
The STM32WB35 and STM32WB30 Value line of the STM32WB portfolio are in production now in a QFN48 package.
