Silicon Labs unveils low-cost BG22L BLE 5.4 and BG24L BLE 6.0 SoCs

Silicon Labs has unveiled the BG22L and BG24L SoCs for low-cost, ultra-low-power Bluetooth LE connectivity. These are Lite versions of the company’s BG22 and BG24 SoC families introduced in 2020 and 2022 respectively.

The 38.4 MHz Silabs BG22L Arm Cortex-M33 SoC targets high-volume, cost-sensitive Bluetooth 5.4 applications like asset tracking tags and small appliances. In comparison, the 78 MHz BG24L Cortex-M33 SoC offers an affordable entry-level solution with AI/ML acceleration and Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding to locate items or implement access control in crowded areas such as warehouses and multi-family housing.

Since the specs for the BG22L and BG24L are similar to the ones for the BG22 and BG24 chips I won’t reproduce those here, and instead highlights the main features and cost-saving measures.

Silicon Labs BG22L Bluetooth LE 5.4 SoC

Silicon Labs BG22L highlights:

• MCU – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 38.4 MHz with DSP and FPU (BG22 is clocked at 76.8 MHz)
• System Memory – Up to 24 kB RAM data memory (BG24 has 32 kB RAM)
• Storage – Up to 352 kB flash program memory (BG24 has 512 kB flash)
• Wireless
  • Radio Performance
    • Sensitivity – -98.9 dBm @ 1 Mbit/s GFSK
    • TX power up to 6 dBm
    • Current – 3.6 mA Rx; 4.1 mA Tx @ 0 dBm; 8.2 mA Tx @ 6 dBm
  • Protocol Support
    • Bluetooth 5.4 Low Energy
    • Optional direction finding using Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) and Angle-of-Departure (AoD)
    • Bluetooth Mesh
    • 2.4 GHz Proprietary
• Peripherals – Similar to BG22 with 18x GPIO, I2C, UART, 16-bit ADC, timers, etc…
• Supply Voltage – 1.71 V to 3.8 V
• Package – 4x4mm QFN32

The main changes between the BG22 and BG22L are the lower MCU core frequency, memory and flash capacities, Bluetooth 5.4 support, and the lack of 2.4 GHz proprietary support. Fewer GPIOs are reported, but that’s because the BG22L is only offered in the 4x4mm QFN32, while the BG22 comes in three packages up to 5x5mm QFN40. The QFN32 package should be pin-to-pin compatible.

Silicon Labs says the BG22L can be integrated into products offering up to ten years of battery life on a coin cell battery, including solutions supporting Bluetooth Direction Finding.

Silicon Labs BG24L Bluetooth LE 6.0 SoC

Silicon Labs BG24L key features:

• MCU core – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 78.0 MHz with DSP instruction and floating-point unit
• AI Accelerator – Optional Matrix Vector Processor (MVP) AI/ML accelerator
• Memory – Up to 96 kB RAM data memory (BG24 has 256 kB RAM)
• Storage – Up to 768 kB flash program memory (BG24 has 1536 kB flash)
• Wireless (Bluetooth)
  • 2.4 GHz Radio Performance
    • -97.6 dBm RX sensitivity @ 1 Mbit/s GFSK (BG24: -97.5dBm)
    • TX power up to +10 dBm (BG24: up to 19.5 dBm)
  • Supported protocols
    • Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth 6.0)
    • Bluetooth Mesh
    • Bluetooth Channel Sounding
• Peripherals – Same as BG24 including I2C, UART, ADC, timers, etc…
• Supply Voltage – 1.71 V to 3.8 V single power supply
• Package – 5×5 mm QFN40

The main changes compared to BG24 are the smaller RAM and flash capacities, Bluetooth 6.0 and Channel Sounding support, and lower TX power.

The optional MVP AI/ML accelerator enables the BG24L to deliver up to 8x faster inferencing performance using only 1/6th of the power compared to performing the same calculations on the Cortex M33 core, improving performance or extending battery life. The company says it makes the BG24L suitable as an ML inferencing platform for time-series data on IoT applications such as sensors and predictive maintenance.

Silicon Labs did not mention software support in detail, but it’s safe to assume the BG22L and BG24L are supported by the Simplicity Studio IDE, and AI/ML can be implemented with Tensorflow, SensiML, and Edge Impulse solutions like the in the BG24. Software development should be done on the BG22 and BG24 development boards.

Silicon Labs BG22L and the BG24L Arm Cortex-M33 Bluetooth LE 5.4/6.0 microcontrollers will enter mass production in Q2 2025. More details may be found on the product pages for the EFR32BG22L Series 2 and EFR32BG24L Series 2 as well as in the press release.

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