If cost is a critical portion of the end- product criteria, the CYW20822 module provides an ideal solution.
By Anurag Chauhan, Director, Product Management of Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy, IoT, Compute and Wireless Business, Infineon Technologies.
After almost 25 years in the marketplace, Bluetooth technology has gone through several changes and improvements to make it an increasingly popular and essential way to convey data safely over rather short distances.
Today, system designers have more options than ever to implement Bluetooth connectivity in a variety of products— especially when they need to balance cost tradeoffs with features. The recently introduced CYW20822– P4TAI040 module with enhanced performance and Bluetooth Low-Energy Long-Range (LE-LR) capability provides one of the most cost-effective options in the industry.
Bluetooth wireless connectivity
Managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), Bluetooth technology continues to evolve to address a variety of short- range wireless applications. By 2028, the SIG expects 7.5 billion Bluetooth- enabled devices will ship annually. With an 8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years, it is anticipated that this healthy growth will come from existing as well as new applications.
Bluetooth technology has multiple radio options, and variations within three major categories. To support both the older Bluetooth Classic and the newest Bluetooth Low- Energy (LE) radios, there are dual-mode devices. Also called Bluetooth Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR), Bluetooth Classic is a point-to-point technology that handles a maximum data rate of 3 megabits-per-second (Mbps).
Its power consumption is relatively high at approximately 1 watt (W). With power consumption between 0.01W and 0.5W, Bluetooth LE can support data rates of up to 2Mbps. With this much lower power consumption and reasonable data rate, it has been modified and improved for several new or emerging uses cases. Introduced in 2016, Bluetooth 5.0, also called Bluetooth Low-Energy Long-Range, brought a 4X range increase and an 8X increase in data broadcasting capacity to the previously added beacon and Real-Time Location System (RTLS) capabilities. A year later, Bluetooth mesh enhancement provided improved capabilities for commercial lighting and large-scale sensor network applications.
In 2023, the SIG introduced Version 5.4 that included Periodic Advertising with Responses (PAwR) and Encrypted Advertising Data. These added capabilities enable Bluetooth devices to deliver a secure, low-power, and scalable connectionless (not a dedicated, connection oriented) protocol required by the Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) market.
With profiles for specific use cases such as healthcare, sport and fitness, sensors/sensing, and more, Bluetooth is primed to address connectivity in numerous expanding applications.
Cost vs. benefits analysis
Based on the variety and number of applications, diverse, sometimes contradictory, performance requirements exist. For example, a system could:
- Operate with high-speed multi-gigabits per second (Gbps) throughput at very low latencies or transmit a few kilobits per second (Kbps) of data just a few times a day.
- Operate with grid power, or with large batteries, or on coin-cell batteries and require months to years of battery life.
- Operate in close proximity to a gateway or Access Point (AP), or at extended distances of up to 1 kilometer (km) or more.
- Operate in a fixed or a mobile environment.
- Operate in a non- congested environment or with thousands of other end nodes in close proximity.
For these opposing design criteria/considerations, there are design time as well as cost aspects that must be considered to improve them, so engineers can decide if it is worth it to include these enhanced features in their design. However, Bluetooth LE has continued to provide improved performance and add new features to better target new use cases and applications. In addition to low cost for cost-sensitive applications, one of the key criteria for many applications is low power consumption, which requires low current consumption.
The CYW20822 module solution Targeting use cases in the industrial internet of things (IoT), smart homes, asset tracking, beacons and sensors, medical devices, and more, the CYW20822–P4TAI040 module is designed to provide the right combination of low power and high performance and simplify system designers’ tough tradeoff decisions.
With very low deep sleep current draw of 2μA and 32KB RAM retention, other key typical current draw ratings include:
- Active RX @ 1Mbps & –95dBm: 1.3mA
- Active TX @ 1Mbps & 0dBm: 3mA
- A 0.8μA Hibernate Mode with no retention
Knowledge of the current draw while performing different operations can be used to extend battery life. In addition to its –101dBm LE sensitivity @ 125Kbps and LE Coded PHY(LE/LR) offering 500Kbps (LE) or 125Kbps (LR), to simplify design, the module has a built-in trace antenna.
With its board-mounted trace antenna, the cost- effective CYW20822- P4TAI040 module comes in a compact form factor of10.5×20.2×2.3mm. In addition, the module is pre-programmed via EZ-Serial firmware to eliminate the need for customer programming. This helps accelerate the time-to-deployment for Bluetooth-enabled IoT solutions. While targeting low cost, with its ultra- low current consumption, the CYW20822 still offers superior Bluetooth connectivity as well as reliable, long-range capability and fine-tuned RF performance.
Bluetooth designers do have choices
In fact, more choices than ever. But if cost is a critical portion of the end-product criteria, the Bluetooth CYW20822 module provides an ideal choice. Coupled with excellent range and RF performance, reliability, preprogramming, and more, designers do not have to make difficult tradeoff decisions—low cost is simply an additional benefit.