Wireless MCU family extended for automotive and industrial markets

NXP Semiconductors has launched new devices within its KW3x family of MCUs. The new KW39/38/37 MCUs add Bluetooth 5.0 long-range abilities and extended Bluetooth advertising channels. These enhancements are delivered while providing seamless migration with hardware, software and tools compatibility with previous generation devices, KW34/35/36. The connectivity MCUs enable Bluetooth LE devices to communicate at distances of over a mile and increase the volume of Bluetooth advertising channels and advertising data within the Bluetooth standard, the main IoT protocol. The new wireless MCU solutions enable developers to satisfy emerging use cases within automotive and industrial digitisation.

The MCUs are created with automotive and industry-grade hardware and software, together with robust serial communications with CAN-FD peripherals. The new devices are ideal for automotive applications, such as keyless entry, sensors and wireless onboard diagnostic functions. Furthermore, they enable industrial applications such as building control and monitoring, fire and safety, home and institutional healthcare, asset management and monitoring and a range of other industrial use cases.

Delivering best-in-class RF performance, the family features extreme RX sensitivity to provide for the long-range Bluetooth Low Energy connections. The new devices achieve -105dBm RX sensitivity with LE-coded 125kbit/s data rate. The MCU’s innovative data stream buffer enables the capture of radio parameters without stalling processor or DMA operations, allowing high-accuracy measurements required for distance and angle approximations.

The company’s MCUXpresso Tool Suite features a certified Bluetooth Low Energy software stack with application programming interface calls. The new MCUs increase the previous generation of devices with hardware and software compatibilities for faster design cycles.