Silicon Labs FG25 Arm Cortex-M33 SoC targets Wi-SUN FAN networks

Silicon Labs announced various new products at its annual Works With Developer Conference including the FG25 Arm Cortex-M33 SoC designed for sub-GHz Wi-SUN FAN networks for Smart Cities and applications such as smart metering, street lighting, electricity distribution automation, municipal infrastructure, and more.

The microcontroller runs at up to 97.5 MHz, features 512KB RAM and up to 1920 KB flash, operates at up to 125°C, consumes as little as 2.6 μA in deep sleep mode, and can offer a range of up to 3 km when used in combination with the new EFF01x front-end module delivering up to +30 dBm output power.

Silicon Labs FG25 (EFR32FG25) specifications:

• CPU core – Arm Cortex-M33 core @ 97.5 MHz with DSP instruction and floating-point unit for signal processing
• Memory – Up to 512 kB RAM data memory
• Storage – Up to 1920 kB flash program memory
• Radio
  • Sub-GHz radio operation
  • TX power up to 16 dBm
  • Up to 2.4 Mbps data rates with low latency
  • Sensitivity
    • -106.3 dBm sensitivity @ 300 kbps 923.7 MHz Wi-SUN OFDM Option 3, MCS4
    • -126.3 dBm sensitivity @ 4.8 kbps 915 MHz O-QPSK
    • -95.3 dBm sensitivity @ 2.4 Mbps 914 MHz Wi-SUN OFDM Option 1, MCS6
  • Supported Modulation Format
    • Wi-SUN MR OFDM MCS 0-6 (all 4 Options)
    • 802.15.4 SUN MR O-QPSK with DSSS
    • Wi-SUN FSK
    • 2 (G)FSK with fully configurable shaping
    • (G)MSK
• Peripherals
  • ADC – 12-bit @ 1 Msps, 16-bit @ 76.9 ksps
  • 2x Analog Comparator (ACMP)
  • Digital to Analog Converter (VDAC) with two channels
  • Low-Energy Sensor Interface (LESENSE)
  • Up to 37x General Purpose I/O pins with output state retention and asynchronous interrupts
  • 8-channel DMA controller
  • 12-channel Peripheral Reflex System (PRS)
  • 6x 16-bit Timer/Counter with 3 Compare/Capture/PWM channels
  • 2x 32-bit Timer/Counter with 3 Compare/Capture/PWM channels
  • 32-bit Real Time Counter
  • 24-bit Low Energy Timer for waveform generation
  • 2x Watchdog Timer
  • 1x USB2.0 Full Speed port, device only
  • 5x EUSART (Enhanced Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) with support for SPI and IrDA
  • 2x I2C interfaces with SMBus support
  • High-frequency Crystal Oscillator clock sharing using buffered sine wave clock output
  • Die temperature sensor with ±2 °C typical accuracy across temperature ranges
• Security (Secure Vault)
  • Secure Boot with Root of Trust and Secure Loader (RTSL)
  • Hardware Cryptographic Acceleration with DPA counter-measures for AES128/256, SHA-1, SHA-2 (up to 256-bit), ECC (up to 256-bit), ECDSA, ECDH and J-Pake
  • True Random Number Generator (TRNG) compliant with NIST SP800-90 and AIS-31
  • Arm TrustZone
  • Secure Debug with lock/unlock
• Power Supply
  • 1.71 to 3.8 V VDD power supply
  • 3.45 to 3.8 V PAVDD power supply for OFDM
• Energy Consumption
  • 6.28 mA RX current at 924 MHz (400 kbps 4-GFSK)
  • 58.6 mA TX current @ 13 dBm output power at 923.6 MHz with CW from FSK PA
  • 76.6 mA TX current @ 16 dBm output power at 915 MHz with CW from FSK PA
  • 186 mA TX current @ 16 dBm output power at 914 MHz (2.4 Mbps Wi-SUN OFDM Option 1, MCS6)
  • 30 μA/MHz in Active Mode (EM0) at 97.5 MHz
  • 4.6 μA EM2 DeepSleep current (512 kB RAM retention and RTC running from LFXO)
  • 2.6 μA EM2 DeepSleep current (32 kB RAM retention and RTC running from LFRCO)
• Temperature Range – -40°C to +125°C
• Package – QFN56 (7 x 7 x 0.85 mm)

Silicon Labs provide a complete Wi-SUN stack with IPv6, 6LoWPAN, security, physical drivers, as well as CoAP libraries and sample applications (meter/collector) in order to speed the time-to-market for their customers.

The company says the FG25 SoC can be used in Border routers (BR), Router nodes, and Leaf nodes in Wi-SUN Field Area Networks, and supports the new Wi-SUN FAN 1.1 standard that enables faster data rates of up to 2.4 Mbps (vs 300 Kbps for Wi-SUN FAN 1.0) and support for battery-operated “sleepy” nodes.

Silicon Labs can provide EFR32FG25 and WiSUN Pro kits that can be used for the development of end nodes and border routers, as well as radio boards at various ISM frequencies from 470 MHz to 915 MHz to meet the legal requirements of different countries.

Silicon Labs FG25 and EFF01 are currently sampling with customers, and are expected to become more broadly available in Q4 2022 and Q2 2023 respectively. More details may be found on the product page, a blog post, and a press release that also addresses other announcements such as Matter development solutions, the Silicon Labs Pro Kit for Amazon Sidewalk, and the company’s first WiFi 6 (and BLE) SoC: the SiWx917. We’ll cover one or more of those in detail in upcoming posts.

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