Silicon Labs has mated a family of wireless transceivers with a line of ultra-low-power microcontrollers to produce a family of a dozen wireless microcontrollers, which were unveiled recently at the Embedded World trade show in Nuremberg, Germany. According to a Silicon Labs spokesperson, the new family of devices offers the best of both worlds: a wireless transceiver with a built-in power amplifier married to an extremely low-power, high-performance microcontroller.
Silicon Labs claims its ultra-low-power family of 8051-compatible microcontrollers already has the industry's lowest active current consumption and lowest sleep current. Additionally, its line of wireless transceivers offers +20 dBm output power without an external PA and -121 dBm receiver sensitivity. Featuring an on-chip DC/DC converter for operating at 0.9 volts, the new Si10xx family of wireless microcontrollers is claimed to increase the lifetime of the battery-powered wireless devices by five times.
The twelve members of the new Si10xx family of wireless microcontrollers all have integrated analog to digital converters and on-chip flash memory ranging from 8 to 64 kbytes. Silicon Labs is targeting its new wireless microcontroller family at battery-powered wireless applications such as home automation, smart meters, on-site utility monitors, and security systems.
A development kit featuring a Si100x motherboard, RF module, USB debug adapter, AC power adapter and software CD is also available.
Source: Silicon Labs
Image: Silicon Labs
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