Infineon expands AIROC Bluetooth LE MCU family

Infineon Technologies AG has extended its Bluetooth portfolio with eight new products in the AIROC CYW20829 Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) 5.4 microcontroller (MCU) family, consisting of system-on-chips (SoCs) and modules optimized for industrial, consumer and automotive use cases. With this new launch, Infineon extends its AIROC CYW20829 portfolio for consumer applications and introduces its first automotive Bluetooth LE 5.4 MCU, the AIROC CYW89829, targeting car access and wireless battery management system (wBMS) applications.

The Bluetooth Core Specification Version 5.4 added several new features, including Periodic Advertising with Response (PAwR), Encrypted Advertisement Data (EAD) and LE GATT Security Levels Characteristic. PAwR enables thousands of Bluetooth 5.4-enabled devices, like electronic shelf labels and sensors, with energy-efficient bidirectional communication with a single access point and is scalable up to 32K nodes. EAD provides a standard way to secure broadcasting of data in advertising packets via encryption and authentication. LE GATT Security Levels Characteristic enables devices to identify the security mode and level for their GATT functionality.

Shantanu Bhalerao, vice president of the Bluetooth product line at Infineon, said these new Bluetooth 5.4 SoCs will enable new use cases thanks to their long range capability; robust RF performance and coexistence; and latest Bluetooth 5.4 features.

PAwR has a lot of interest because it enables connecting Bluetooth devices in the thousands, Bhalerao said. While this is a lot more than what a car needs, over the next five years there will be about twenty Bluetooth-connected devices in a car, following what has happened in smart homes, which now have about 40 connected devices, he added.

In addition, the high integration of the CYW20829 product family allows designers to reduce bill-of-material (BOM) cost and device footprint in a variety of consumer and industrial applications, including PC accessories, low-energy audio, wearables, solar micro inverters, asset trackers, health and lifestyle and home automation.

The new family also is part of Infineon’s strategy to be carbon neutral by 2030. The CYW20829 is used in solar farms to connect micro inverters, instead of using wires, and in the future it will enable car access using the phone as the key, and hopefully enabling car fleet sharing as well as wireless battery management systems, which will reduce wires and weight in an electric vehicle (EV) as well as improve the second life reuse of batteries, Bhalerao said.

Highly integrated SoCs

The low power AIROC CYW20829 Bluetooth LE chips claim robust RF performance, along with the latest Bluetooth features, built-in security and a range of integrated peripherals. The CYW20889 features a dual Arm Cortex-M33: a 96-MHz Arm Cortex-M33 MCU for applications and a secondary Arm Cortex-M33 dedicated for the Bluetooth controller. It provides full-feature support for Bluetooth LE 5.4.

This dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 device is a very capable MCU to drive displays, do a lot of algorithms and even basic machine-learning algorithms that some of our customers are already using, Bhalerao said.

Other CYW20889 features include a “best-in-class” RF link budget up to -116 dBm with an integrated power amplifier (PA), providing 10 dBm of transmit output power and receive sensitivity of -98 dBm for Bluetooth LE  1 Mbits/s and -106 dBm for LE Long Range 125 Kbits/s. Power consumption is 4.5 µA for deep sleep with 64-KB retention. The CPU subsystem includes 256 KB of SRAM, an XIP-capable quad SPI interface and a range of peripherals, including CAN FD, PDM, I2S, ADC and timers, and up to 32 programmable GPIOs. Security features include secure boot, secure execution environment, a true random number generator (TRNG) and crypto accelerators.

The CYW20829 is a highly integrated MCU with Bluetooth LE 5.4 support, featuring 256-KB memory, 32 GPIOs, a rich set of peripherals and high security with secure boot and secure execution environment. (Source: Infineon Technologies AG)

All these features enable a variety of applications. The latest Bluetooth chips target consumer and automotive. PC accessories are a common use case as well as gaming AR/VR, Bhalerao said. He also sees new use cases for wireless microphones enabled by Bluetooth LE Audio or Auracast, such as microphones for auditoriums or hearing-aid-type applications. “We also support industrial, which are very new use cases enabled by longer range, including solar farms, electronic shelf labels and power tools.”

The automotive version, the AIROC CYW89829, also delivers robust RF performance, long range capability and the latest Bluetooth 5.4 features. The low-power dual ARM Cortex core design of the AIROC CYW89829 family features the same separate application and Bluetooth LE subsystems as the CYW20889. Key features include Rx sensitivity of -106 dBm, 10-dBm output power without a power amplifier, integrated flash, CAN FD and high security, including crypto accelerators and root of trust. The family is also PSA level 1 ready. It targets wBMS and car access as well as two-wheeler and e-bike display applications.

Bhalerao said the Bluetooth LE MCUs offer the longest range in the industry for both automotive and non-automotive applications, citing two test examples. The first experiment, using CYW20829 Bluetooth kits, powered by the CYW20829 Bluetooth LE MCU, shows stable connections in a crowded 93,000 sq.-ft. (276 ft × 340 ft) warehouse with a lot of interference from smartphones, smartwatches and Bluetooth headphones as well as rows of product displays as high as 6-ft tall. These results also translate into potential automotive use cases in parking lots, Bhalerao said.

The test found that the CYW20889 in a crowded 2.4-GHz environment offers better noise immunity and better connection with less retransmits and better latency and throughput. This is tied to the part’s high transmit power and the best Rx blocker, which helps in high noise conditions, Bhalerao said. “Within the same noise conditions we can perform much better than the competition while being spec compliant.”

Typically, these long ranges are tied to a high RF link budget, which comes from high transmit power, Bhalerao said. “We do +10 dBm, with no external PA needed, and have very high receive sensitivity of -98 dBm for standard operation.”

The other example illustrates how a stable connection was achieved with the AIROC CYW20829 over 2.3 km line of sight on a beach using Bluetooth LE Long Range Coded PHY, without an external PA. The test showed a maximum output power of 10 dBm using the integrated PA, and the Coded PHY improved the maximum sensitivity of the CYW20829 MCU to -106 dBm.

The CYW20829 offers a good range, the latest Bluetooth 5.4 features and a high level of integration, with +10-dBm output power, so it doesn’t need any external PA, Bhalerao said. “Customers can optimize their BOM, take out about 30% of the cost, and have a longer battery lifetime, which is tied to the low power consumption.”

Each of the eight new products target specific applications. Currently in production is the CYW20829B0010 (56-QFN SoC, 6 × 6 mm) for gaming accessories and LE Audio products.

Sampling now are the following parts:

• CYW20829B0000 (56-QFN SoC package, 6 × 6 mm) for PC accessories, remotes, ESL and low-end BLE MCUs
• CYW20829B0021 (40-QFN SoC package, 6 × 6 mm) for industrial and long-range applications
• CYW89829B0022 (40-QFN SoC package 6 × 6 mm) for wireless BMS and car access
• CYW89829B0232 (77-BGA SoC package, 7 × 8 mm) for wireless BMS and car access
• CYW20829B0-P4EPI100 and CYW20829B0-P4TAI100 modules, both with a dimension of 14.5 × 19 mm, for long range, asset tracking, power tools and generic Bluetooth LE use cases

In the second quarter of 2025, samples will be available for the CYW20829B1230 SoC (64-ball BGA package, 4.5 × 4.5 mm), targeting wearables, power tools and asset tracking.