Nordic Semiconductor is claiming one of the industry’s lowest-power wireless transceivers for the Bluetooth low-energy standard. The µBlue nRF8001 draws peak currents of only 12.5mA, with connected mode average currents as low as 12µA, for 1-second connection intervals.
The device has a DC-DC regulator that, if enabled, can further cut peak and average currents by up to 20% when running from a coin cell battery source.
The nRF8001 is a fully qualified Bluetooth v4.0 low-energy design which combines the radio, link layer and host into a single device with one end-¬product listing.
The chip supports slave role operation and features a simple serial interface supporting external microcontrollers.
A number of low energy Bluetooth transceivers have been introduced since version 4.0 of the specification was published last summer.
The potential this opens for small coin-cell battery powered Bluetooth wireless products and sensors has not been ignored by Bluetooth chip suppliers.
"It creates an opportunity for linking these platforms to billions of connections powered by Bluetooth low energy technology in devices as varied as remote controls, medical instruments and smart energy controls," said Kanwar Chadha, chief marketing officer for CSR, which is offering qualified Bluetooth v4.0 host stack software.
The low-energy part of v4.0 specifies two types of implementation: single and dual mode. Single mode can talk only to other single-mode and dual-mode devices, not to classic Bluetooth devices.
The Nordic chip has a 32kHz RC oscillator, a 16MHz crystal oscillator for use with lower cost crystals, plus an on-chip linear voltage regulator that provides a supply range of 1.9-3.6V as an alternative to its integrated DC-DC regulator.
Texas Instruments also has a fully qualified Bluetooth low energy stack supporting its CC2540 single-mode Bluetooth low-energy controller CC257x ANT network processor.
Cambridge Consultants has a Bluetooth development platform for prototyping systems based on CSR’s BlueCore-5 chip.
Called DEVA, the design platform, which includes a 128x128 monochrome LCD display, can be used to develop Bluetooth headsets, industrial remote control devices and healthcare sensors.
Last week, Oxford-based Toumaz announced a radio chip based on it proprietary sub-1GHz low-power radio technology, developed for healthcare monitors, to create a general-purpose radio transceiver that runs off 1V using a single button cell battery and consumes less than 3mW continuous use power.
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