This Week's Focus: Microcontroller Watch
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Low-Power Wireless MCUs
Provide Real-Time Performance

STMicroelectronics (ST) has announced its latest Bluetooth offering, its STM32WBx5 dual-core wireless MCUs. The devices come with Bluetooth 5, OpenThread and ZigBee 3.0 connectivity combined with ultra-low-power performance. Fusing features of ST's STM32L4 Arm Cortex-M4 MCUs and in-house radio managed by a dedicated Cortex-M0+, the STM32WBx5 is power-conscious yet capable of concurrent wireless-protocol and real-time application execution. It is well suited to remote sensors, wearable trackers, building automation controllers, computer peripherals, drones and other IoT devices.
Security features of the STM32WBx5 MCUs include Customer Key Storage (CKS), Public Key Authorization (PKA), and encryption engines for the radio MAC and upper layers. The MCUs have up to 1 MB of on-chip flash and a Quad-SPI port for efficient connection to external memory, if needed. Additional features include crystal-less Full-Speed USB, 32 MHz RF oscillator with trimming capacitors, a touch-sense controller, LCD controller, analog peripherals and multiple timers and watchdogs. The balun for antenna connection is also integrated.



Infineon, Xilinx and Xylon Team Up for
Safety-Critical MCU Effort

Infineon Technologies has announced an effort with Xilinx and Xylon to produce a new Xylon IP core called logiHSSL. It enables high-speed communication between Infineon's AURIX TC2xx and TC3xx MCUs and Xilinx' SoC, MPSoC and FPGA devices via the Infineon High Speed Serial Link (HSSL). This serial link supports baud rates of up to 320 Mbaud at a net payload data-rate of up to 84%. The HSSL is an Infineon native interface, low-cost in regards to pin-count because it requires only five pins---two LVDS with two pins each and one CLK pin. So far, the HSSL interface is used to exchange data between AURIX devices and customer ASICs for performance or functional extension.
Now, the new IP core will allow system developers to combine safety and security provided by AURIX with the wide range of functional possibilities brought to the table by the Xilinx devices. Linked devices can access and control each other's internal and connected resources through the HSSL.



Enclustra FPGA Modules
Power Electric Racing Car
 
Formula Student is the largest engineering competition in the world. The Zurich/Switzerland based AMZ student team managed to put itself top of the world rankings, also thanks to the innovative, FPGA module-based approach for the electric drivetrain. Four self-developed inverters control one motor each. A self-developed direct torque control (DTC) modulator is running on a Xilinx Zynq 7015 FPGA-System-on-Chip based Mercury ZX5 SoC module from FPGA expert Enclustra.
VHDL implementation makes it possible to estimate the current state of the motor and calculate the new switching positions every 10 ns---capabilities not possible with a microcontroller- or DSP based system. The module-based approach reduced development time and risk significantly. The Mercury ZX5 SoC module provided exactly all needed functionality on one single small PCB. The module even can power circuits on the base board, minimizing the need for power converters.
 
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Low-Power Bluetooth MCUs Deliver Mesh Networking
    
Cypress Semiconductor has announced it is sampling two low-power, dual-mode Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) MCUs that include support for Bluetooth mesh networking for the Internet of Things (IoT). The new CYW20819 and CYW20820 MCUs each provide simultaneous Bluetooth 5.0 audio and BLE connections.

The CYW20819 Bluetooth/BLE MCU has the ability to maintain Serial Port Profile (SPP) protocol connections and Bluetooth mesh connections simultaneously. The CYW20820 offers the same features and integrates a power amplifier (PA) with up to 10 dBm output power for long-range applications up to 400 m and whole-home coverage. This provides classic Bluetooth tablet and smartphone connections while enabling a low-power, standards-compliant mesh network for sensor-based smart home or enterprise applications.