Texas Instruments is trying to bring better wireless connectivity to a wider range of IoT devices with a new family of Wi-Fi 6 companion ICs.
The first offerings in the CC33xx family include chips for Wi-Fi 6—the CC3300—and Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) 5.3 in the same IC package—the CC3301. Although they must be attached to a central microcontroller (MCU) or processor (MPU) in a system, TI said the new chips are designed to put the powers of Wi-Fi 6 connectivity into the IoT at an affordable price.
The 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi chips have the flexibility to be attached to TI’s or other third-party companies’ processors that support Linux or real-time operating systems (RTOS) via general-purpose interfaces.
Housed in 40-pin, 5- x 5-mm quad flat no-lead (QFN) packages, the new wireless connectivity ICs are also affordable enough to add to virtually any embedded system quickly and easily, TI said. The chips are priced at $1.60 each in 1,000-unit quantities.
Wi-Fi is one of the most widespread wireless protocols in the world. However, it’s also increasingly playing a part in billions of IoT devices from the smart home to medical, building automation, and industrial systems such as EV chargers.
Enhanced, Cost-Efficient Connectivity
TI said the Wi-Fi 6 chips feature orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) and a wide range of other improvements over Wi-Fi 5. According to the company, the CC33xx family stands out for its ability to connect many more devices at the same time without interference from other IoT devices —that may have other wireless protocols at work—in the vicinity, which can take a toll on RF performance.
“Our new SimpleLink family of Wi-Fi devices will make it significantly more affordable and much easier to implement the latest Wi-Fi technologies in more places than ever before,” stated Marian Kost, VP and GM of connectivity at TI. He cited EV chargers as a class of embedded system requiring wireless connectivity that can work over the −40 to 105°C temperature range of TI’s new Wi-Fi ICs.
The chips also can attach to TI’s multiprotocol wireless MCUs. This gives customers more flexibility when it comes to IoT connectivity with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE 5.3, Thread, and other IoT protocols and standards, including Matter.
They can be paired with its AM62A Arm Cortex-A vision processors or other AI-equipped MPUs to connect intelligent edge devices to the cloud via Wi-Fi. Other interfaces inside the chips include SDIO, SPI, and UART.
TI is taking security more seriously with the new Wi-Fi IC family, which contains cryptography, secure boot with firmware authentication, and secure key storage inside the device. Networking security via WPA3 is supported.
Now sampling, the CC33xx family belongs to TI’s growing portfolio of SimpleLink wireless MCUs, modules, and ICs, along with hardware and software tools. Mass production of the CC33xx family will start in the fourth quarter of 2023.
TI also has plans to start sampling pin-to-pin compatible, dual-band, 2.4- and 5-GHz Wi-Fi 6 chips later in 2023.
