ST has announced a wireless microcontroller with the Bluetooth 5.3 LE software, initially in a 5 x 5mm QFN, and scheduled to be available in a ~2.8 x 3mm chip-scale package.

ST STM32WB09 bluetooth MCU
STM32WB09 (right) is built around a single Arm Cortex-M0+ core and will support 2Mbit/s data, long range (coded PHY), advertising extensions, angle-of-arrival, angle-of-departure, LE data packet length extension and LE ping procedure, amongst other attributes.

“This core hosts the application while the radio manages the Bluetooth wireless connection,” said ST.

Rx sensitivity level of -97dBm is claimed (1Mbit/s, or -104dBm ‘long range’ for 125kbit/s) and output power can be set in 1dBm steps up to +8dBm.

Applications such as real-time locating, indoor positioning, item finding and asset tracking are foreseen.

Module
At the same time, the company announced a 2.4GHz wireless module, called STM32WB1MMC.

This is built around the earlier STM32WB15CCY wireless microcontroller (320kbyte flash, 48kbyte ram) and “requires no RF expertise”, said the company. It is “Bluetooth Low Energy 5.4 certified with worldwide radio-equipment approvals, it provides a full reference design in an LGA package [and] is the best way to speed up the application development. The module is completely protocol stack royalty-free”.

Board
B-WB1M-WPAN1 is an evaluation board with a STM32WB1MMCH6 module which “also contains movement, temperature and barometric-pressure sensors that can be incorporated into the system,  and an industry-standard connector for attaching an external antenna”.

Used with the company’s STM32Cube ecosystem, the board enables power-consumption and RF testing.