RE01B is a 32bit Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller made on the company’s ‘SOTB’ silicon on thin buried oxide process.
Current consumption can be as low as 35µA/MHz during operation, and 600nA during stand-by (core 500nA + Bluetooth 100nA). Maximum operating frequency is 64MHz.
Combined with Renesas’ ISL9123 low quiescent dc-dc converter, configured for step-down, operational current can be reduced to 15µA/MHz.
“Managing battery maintenance and replacement is one crucial hurdle ahead of the widespread adoption of ultra-low-power IoT devices that are expected to run for long periods with limited or no maintenance,” said Renesas v-p Shigeki Kato. “The new Bluetooth-capable RE MCU will remove the needs for battery maintenance.”
Bluetooth 5.0 Long Range is supported for up to 400m and 2Mbit/s operation. Peak current is 3mA dring reception (1Mbit/s)and 4.3mA for transmission (0dBm 1Mbps).
Alongside the processor is 1.5Mbyte of flash and 256kbyte of SRAM. Over-the-air firmware update is possible, and flash can be programmed at ~0.6mA. Trusted secure IP is included.
Amongst peripherals there is a 14bit ADC (~4µA) and an energy harvesting control circuit with start-up capacitor charging and secondary battery protection to allow direct connection to a harvester and storage.
Operation is across 1.62 to 3.6V and the package is an 8 x 8mm 64pin QFN.
Development tools include one which generates programs for custom Bluetooth profiles that can be integrated into user application programs, and a Bluetooth test suite which provides GUI-based wireless characteristics evaluations and Bluetooth functionality verification.
A Bluetooth 5.0 protocol stack is available, as are APIs conforming to various standard protocols such as heart rate (HRP), environment sensing (ESP), and automation I/O (AIOP).
Reference designs are in the pipeline for wearable devices and GNSS (sat nav) based tracking.
Tessera Technology is making an evaluation kit (EB-RE01B).