Texas Instruments (TI) is launching a family of Bluetooth® LE wireless MCUs that deliver high-quality RF and power performance at a reasonable price, raising expectations that this will ease the financial burden on engineers.

TI announced on the 22nd that it is expanding its connectivity product portfolio with the recent launch of the SimpleLink™ Bluetooth LE CC2340 wireless microcontroller (MCU) family.

Building on TI's decades of expertise in wireless connectivity, the new family of wireless MCUs delivers high-quality Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) at half the price of competing devices, while delivering best-in-class standby current and RF performance.

The CC2340 family starts at $0.79, making it easy for engineers to add Bluetooth LE connectivity to more products at an affordable price.

“By 2022, we expect to see approximately 5 billion Bluetooth-enabled devices shipping,” said Mark Powell, CEO of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the nonprofit organization that manages and oversees the Bluetooth® technology standard. “Thanks to the participation and support of Bluetooth SIG members like Texas Instruments, Bluetooth technology is poised to meet the growing demand for high-performance wireless connectivity across a wider range of applications,” said John H. Hoffman, Vice President of the Bluetooth SIG. “We appreciate the contributions of our members who have expanded the Bluetooth ecosystem and accelerated the adoption of Bluetooth technology, enabling us to deliver innovative solutions.”

The CC2340R2 and CC2340R5 wireless MCUs offer 256KB and 512KB of flash memory, respectively, providing engineers with flexibility and ample space to store application code.

As Bluetooth LE applications proliferate, designers need additional memory capacity to easily update software remotely. The new wireless MCU family supports over-the-air (OTA) downloads with 36KB of RAM.

The new MCUs feature industry-leading standby current of less than 830nA, which is 40 percent lower than competing devices.

By lowering the standby current in this way, the life of coin cell batteries can be extended to up to 10 years in wireless applications such as electronic price tags or tire pressure monitoring systems.

Additionally, the CC2340 family has a wide operating temperature range from -40°C to 125°C, enabling reliable connections in a variety of applications ranging from industrial sensors and medical laboratories to outdoor environments such as electric vehicle chargers and smart meters.

Engineers can extend RF performance and connection range with up to +8dBm output power, an industry-leading performance among competing Bluetooth LE wireless MCUs. Additionally, the CC2340 family integrates an RF balun (balanced-to-unbalanced transformer), simplifying design and reducing external component count, thereby lowering cost.