STMicroelectronics has expanded the STM32WB portfolio of dual-core multi-protocol microcontrollers (MCUs) by introducing the STM32WB35 and STM32WB30 Value Line, giving designers more flexibility to target cost-conscious market opportunities.

The extremely low-power MCUs integrate a 2.4GHz radio managed by a dedicated Arm Cortex-M0+ core, with a 64MHz Arm Cortex-M4 for the main application, to permit uninterrupted real-time performance. They support Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0, Zigbee 3.0, OpenThread (IEEE 802.15.4) protocols, and concurrent modes, with built-in security features. All stacks are fully certified, supported, and handled by ST and available free of charge. The new devices are suited to large-scale IoT applications such as fleet and resource management, as well as asset monitoring and tracking.

Packaged in QFN48, the new devices are pin-compatible with existing STM32WB5x devices and share common MCU features, giving users the flexibility to easily scale and migrate their designs. The MCUs integrate the radio balun, USB2.0 Full Speed device with crystal-less oscillator, embedded capacitors for 32MHz crystal, and DC/DC step-down converter to minimize the Bill of Materials (BoM) and platform footprint. Outstanding RF performance, with programmable output power up to +6dBm and with a 102dBm link budget, ensures reliable connectivity over longer distances, while ultra-low power consumption extends battery runtime.

All STM32WB products are supported in the market-proven STM32Cube ecosystem, an exhaustive software development suite offering a combination of embedded software libraries and software tools addressing all the needs of a complete project development cycle, thus ensuring a consistent user experience across the whole portfolio.

The STM32WB35 and STM32WB30 Value Line devices are available with up to 512 KBytes of integrated Flash memory and up to 96 KBytes of SRAM, with a Quad-SPI interface for connecting to external high-speed memory. They also provide a rich selection of analog peripherals, digital interfaces, and fast I/Os, many of which are 5V tolerant.

With a focus on security, the STM32WB MCUs integrate Secure firmware installation (SFI), hardware encryption for the application and radio stacks, hardware public-key Authority (PKA), hardware accelerators for state-of-the-art cryptographic algorithms, and support for secure Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates.

The STM32WB35 and STM32WB30 Value line are in production now, in the QFN48 package. Prices start from $1.57 for the STM32WB30CEU5A for orders in volume.