Energy Micro announces details of energy friendly radio product family

embedded world 2011, NUREMBERG, GERMANY & OSLO, NORWAY: Energy Micro has announced advance details of its forthcoming energy friendly radio (EFR) product family.

Complementing the company’s EFM32 Gecko microcontrollers, EFR4D Draco high performance radio solutions will consume only 25 percent of the energy of competing products. Based on an ARM Cortex-M0 core, Draco system-on-chip (SoC) radios will achieve receive and transmit current consumption as low as 5mA and 6mA respectively.

To maximise design flexibility, the EFR4D Draco product family will be offering users three alternative and cost effective radio device implementations: transceiver only, supported by EFM32 for protocol stack and user application; combined transceiver and protocol stack, supported by EFM32 for user application; and complete SoC solution, integrating transceiver, protocol stack and user application in a single EFR4D. The first transceiver only and SoC products are scheduled to be sampling during Q4’2011. Pricing will start at $1.1 each in 100k quantities.

The radio performance of the EFR4D products will also be higher than existing alternatives, with a maximum output power of +17dBm at 868MHz for example, receive sensitivity of typically -121dbm, FSK 1.2kbps and high receiver selectivity, blocking and image rejection capability. EFR4D will also be handling more frequency bands and radio protocols than competing products.

The products will span the complete RF spectrum between 167MHz and 2500MHz and will support the industry’s broadest range of radio protocols, including IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth LE and Wireless M-Bus. EFR will also readily suit customers’ proprietary protocols.

Energy Micro's president and CEO, Geir Førre, said: "In the pursuit of the lowest possible energy consumption, designers of energy sensitive products relying on wireless connectivity need to consider the overheads presented by both the processor core and the RF transceiver – both have a significant impact on energy budgets.

"We have already proven, with our Gecko product family, that we can create the world’s most energy friendly microcontrollers, so it makes perfect sense that we also now turn our attention to creating the world’s most energy friendly radio transceivers and SoCs. Draco will combine a state-of-the art RF transceiver with a technology-leading microcontroller to help designers achieve a 4 times longer battery life.”