Mouser Electronics is supplying Silicon Labs' EFR32BG12 and EFR32BG13 Blue Gecko SoCs. These products are low-power Bluetooth SoCs belonging to the Wireless Gecko portfolio, featuring enhanced performance including improved RF capabilities, increased encryption acceleration, expanded memory options, on-chip capacitive touch control, and the addition of low-power peripheral and sensor interfaces.

Silicon Labs’ EFR32BG12 and EFR32BG13 Blue Gecko SoCs, supplied by Mouser Electronics, integrate a high-performance 32-bit 40MHz ARM Cortex-M4 core with 2.4GHz and sub-1GHz wireless transceivers.

The EFR32BG12 provides 1MB of flash memory and 256KB of RAM, while the EFR32BG13 provides 512KB of flash memory and 64KB of RAM, offering higher memory capacity than the previous generation Blue Gecko products. Based on this significantly expanded memory, complex and feature-rich IoT applications can be easily developed, and it supports multiple protocol stacks, real-time operating systems such as Micrium OS, backup images for devices, and OTA (Over-the-Air) upgrades to extend the lifespan of IoT products.

The SoC features 2Mbps Bluetooth PHY performance, providing sufficient throughput for applications running the Bluetooth 5 specification stack.

The Bluetooth 5 standard increases transmission range fourfold, connection speed twofold, and broadcast capacity eightfold, while also improving coexistence with other wireless IoT protocols. It supports powerful peripherals such as hardware cryptographic accelerators, 12-bit ADCs, DACs, 12-channel peripheral reflex systems, and various communication interfaces. Various security options can be applied, including AES, ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography), SHA-1, and SHA-224/256 with 128-bit or 256-bit keys.

In addition, since the SoC includes an oscillator on the chip, it does not require an external 32KHz crystal oscillator required for low-power Bluetooth devices. By utilizing the integrated PLFRCO (precision low-frequency resistor-capacitor oscillator), BOM costs can be reduced for large design tasks that require a 32KHz crystal oscillator to meet low-power Bluetooth sleep clock accuracy specifications. PLFRCO ensures a strong and reliable low-power Bluetooth connection across the device's entire operating temperature range.

The EFR32BG12 and EFR32BG13 Blue Gecko SoCs are suitable for use in energy-friendly Bluetooth 5 networking for IoT devices, wellness products, home and building automation, smart metering, etc.