VeriSilicon has introduced a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5.0 RF IP based on GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDX FD-SOI process. On the strength of VeriSilicon’s innovative RF architecture and by leveraging GF’s 22FDX technology, the new product achieves significant improvements in power, area, and cost compared to current offerings, it will better serve the emerging and increasing wearable devices and IoT applications.
The VeriSilicon BLE 5.0 RF IP includes a transceiver which is compliant with the BLE 5.0 specification and supports GFSK modulation and demodulation. The silicon measurement shows that the sensitivity can be tested up to -98 dBm with less than 7 mW power dissipation in typical conditions. It largely improves battery life for low power IoT applications. In addition, the RF transceiver saves 40% area compared to a similar implementation on 55nm bulk CMOS. Besides the RF transceiver, this IP integrates on-chip balun, TX/RX switch and 32K RC OSC driver to save the BOM. Moreover, high efficiency DC/DC and LDOs are also available for power management.
An SoC with VeriSilicon BLE 5.0 RF IP will be fabricated using GF’s 22FDX process with cost-effective scaling and power reduction for IoT applications. 22FDX enables efficient single-chip integration of RF, transceiver, baseband, processor, and power management components. The new BLE 5.0 RF IP will thus significantly reduce system cost and greatly boost the growth momentum of wearable products such as wireless earplugs.
