20-12-2019 | U-Blox | Subs & Systems
U-blox has announced its latest ultra-small, high-performance Bluetooth low energy 5.0 module, the BMD-380. Measuring only 7.5mm x 9.5mm including the ceramic antenna, it features Bluetooth 5.0 specifications, with its long-range protocol ideal for implementing communication in harsh radio environments. It supports IEEE802.15.4 (Thread and Zigbee). All these elements make the device high performing for employment cases in industrial automation, healthcare, smart buildings, smart cities, and homes, and high-end wearables.
The device is based on a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 SoC, which comprises a 64MHz Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller with integrated floating-point unit, 256kB RAM, and 1MB of flash memory. Furthermore, it provides a broad range of hardware interfaces, including I2C, SPI, QSPI, GPIO, ADC, and USB, making it powerful enough to incorporate both communication stacks and advanced applications. The module also features Arm’s TrustZone CryptoCell cryptographic unit, which simplifies the implementation of security features needed to build robust IoT ecosystems.
The company expects the module to be employed where customers have limited space to implement their designs, require good radio performance, and want to control the bill of materials for their target device by using the onboard processor as the main system MCU.
