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MCU with IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth LE target mutiple IoT apps

Date: 03/11/2016
NXP semiconductors’ new Kinetis KW41Z wireless microcontroller trigger the trend of using multi-protocol wireless MCUs in the embedded IoT market. The use of IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth low energy v4.2 is becoming essential for the latest IoT applications such as smart homes, building automation, medical electronics, wearable devices and to some extent in devices such as computer keyboards, mouse, gaming controllers. It can even be extended to security systems which can be part of your smart home systems.

IEEE 802.15.4 standard is the latest physical layer and media access control specifications for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs). IEEE 802.15 is referred as basis for the ZigBee, ISA100.11a, WirelessHART, MiWi, and Thread short range wireless data communication specs.

There are a wide range of applications where both LR-WPAN and Bluetooth are required. This device KW41Z Kinetis microcontrollers from NXP semiconductors addresses this requirement by having both the transceivers in a single chip. The Bluetooth part of the IP is from India based design service company Mindtree. Mindtree’s BlueLitE, Bluetooth Smart Semiconductor IP is incorporated into this latest Kinetis KW41Z MCU. BlueLitE from Mindtree is designed to take lesser footprint and lesser power consumption. BlueLitE supports optional features of the of the Bluetooth low energy specifications making it versatile and targeting multiple industry segments. BlueLite also integrates advanced power management features and can be portable across multiple MCU architectures and different RF interfaces and OS.

The KW41Z has 2.4 GHz transceiver supporting FSK/GFSK and O-QPSK modulations powered by ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU with 512 KB Flash and up to 128 KB SRAM. It also has 802.15.4 packet processor, hardware security and peripherals. The security features available in MCU include AES 128 and true random number generator. It also has analog support of 16-bit ADC and 12-bit DAC. The communication interfaces include 2 I2C, 2 SPI and Low power UART.

To know further on this KW41Z visit the NXP website: http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/arm-processors/kinetis-cortex-m-mcus/w-series-wireless-m0-plus-m4/kinetis-kw41z-2.4-ghz-dual-mode-ble-and-802.15.4-wireless-radio-microcontroller-mcu-based-on-arm-cortex-m0-plus-core:KW41Z