Electronics Weekly
Called STM32WBA6x, the controllers have a 100MHz Arm Cortex-M33 core with floating-point and DSP extensions, backed by up to 2Mbyte of flash and 512kbyte of ram.
The flash memory is dual-bank. “Thread, Zigbee, Matter and Bluetooth are naturally low-bandwidth protocols, [which] means that downloading the firmware update can take a significant amount of time,” said ST. “Thanks to dual bank memory, users can keep using their device and [simultaneously] install the update.”
Sensitivity in the wireless sub-system is as high as -100dBm for 250kbit/s IEEE 802.15.4, or -96dBm for 1Mbit/s Bluetooth LE.
RF output power is up to +10dBm in 1dB steps, and there is an integrated balun as well as support for external power amplifier.
Consumption is 4.26mA for the Rx and 5.94mA for the Tx at 0dBm.
Within the family there are members for concurrent multi-protocol working, and stripped-down parts for single-protocol use.
“Concurrent multiprotocol wireless makes the STM32WBA6 series ideal for applications that leverage Matter, which is designed to run on top of other protocols,” said ST. “The X-Cube-Matter software package integrates the Matter SDK and comes with application examples to ease development.”
The Cortex-M33 already has Arm’s TrustZone isolation for hypervisor software, to which ST has added cryptographic accelerators, a random generator, and other security assets (diagram left) suited to end-products that achieve SESIP3 and PSA Level3 certification and comply with CRA regulations and the EU Radio Equipment Directive [‘RED’].
Peripherals include USB High Speed, three SPI ports, four I2C ports, three USARTs and one LPUART.
Operation is from 1.71 to 3.6V and over -40 to 85°C or 105°C depending on the part.
Amongst modes, the ICs can run at 29 µA/MHz, stand-by at 120nA and wake-from-pin, and stand-by at 1.33μA with the real-time clock running.
Package options include a 7 x 7mm UFQFPN48, a 6 x 6mm UFBGA121 with 121 pins, and a 3.78 x 3.46mm wafer-scale WLCSP88.
Applications are foreseen in smart homes, health, factories and agriculture.
