FG23 Wireless Sub-GHz SoC

Silicon Labs' FG23 is the industry’s first wireless sub-GHz SoC with an Arm® Cortex®-M33, a dedicated security core and Arm PSA3 certification. The device improves on the leading RF performance of Series 1 and now enables 10+ year coin cell battery operation. The M33 is part of the latest Arm - V8 offering and provides customers with a 20% improvement in computing scores (DMIP/MHz).

The high-performance radio front end operating from 110 MHz to 727 MHz and 742 MHz to 970 MHz delivers up to 3 dB of sensitivity improvement, which can drastically improve the range that the radio can communicate up to 40%. The radio supports all the key sub-GHz modulations (FSK, GFSK, and OQPSK). It offers DSSS, MSK, GMSK, OOK, and a direct modulation mode capability. The radio supports all the physical layer (PHY) protocols to run WM-BUS, mioty, Amazon Sidewalk, and Flex software stacks.

Silicon Labs also took cost into consideration, and users will see an overall system cost reduction by combining the MCU and radio in a single package. Additionally, a single-ended RF front end that does not require a balun is used, providing users additional savings on their Bill of Material (BOM).

To be able to sense the environment, the device is set up with many peripheral interfaces (KeyScan, LCD, ADC, VDAC, ACMP, and PCTN) that can be selectively brought out to any of the 31 GPIO interface pins on the device. With the use of the Low Energy Sense (LESENSE) function, these peripherals can be controlled by Silicon Labs’ internal Peripheral Reflex System (PRS) to run independently in low power mode without the use of the main processor. This feature can be used in most sensing applications and can greatly extend the battery life of the product or allow the designer to select a smaller battery for their device.