From Silicon Labs: New Flex Gecko Wireless Solution Takes Low Power to New Extremes

We have some great news for customers looking to differentiate their low-power and long-range wireless devices using our proprietary wireless EFR32 Flex Gecko family. Silicon Labs just released another proprietary wireless solution – the new Flex Gecko EFR32FG14, which achieves significant low power gains and offers many of the same peripheral capabilities found in our previous Flex Gecko solutions.

The EFR32FG14 expands on the success of the EFR32FG1 products by offering remarkable low-power benefits with up to 48 percent sleep current reduction, and new flexibility to connect to more peripherals, such as VDAC and OpAmp support. The new solution maintains RF performance enhancements from previous solutions while offering similar Flash and RAM memory options and improved security features.

As always, our first priority during our design process is to listen to what our customers need to say and strive to make improvements based on their feedback. This new Flex Gecko solution is no different, and our customers will immediately see the low-power and performance benefits. New improvements to the EFR32FG14 include enhanced 2.4 GHz RF performance, deep sleep data processing, improved security with a new true random number generator security management unit, and boosted Sub-GHz performance with improved 2/4 (G) FSK sensitivity.

To simplify product spec comparisons, we specified the test conditions of our Flex Gecko products in our documentation materials as clearly as possible, with minimum and maximum values for key parameters, and also provided RAIL-based application code examples using the FM modes.

With more than 250 million Silicon Labs proprietary wireless ICs shipped to date, the new Flex Gecko solution furthers our expertise and footprint in the proprietary wireless market. The wireless Flex Gecko portfolio supports sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz designs with a single chip, simplifying board development, inventory management, and time to market for our customers. Our new solution along with all of our Flex Gecko devices are footprint compatible with the Blue Gecko and Mighty Gecko devices, allowing customers to add multi-protocol support into their designs later with minimal changes. Ultimately, Flex Gecko provides a seamless migration path to multi-protocol applications requiring the addition of BLE, Zigbee or Thread.

The EFR32FG14 product will be used for a wide variety of low-power and long-range communications devices, such as smart meters, electronic shelf tables, home automation, security systems, lighting controls, medical emergency devices, and agricultural applications.

As the IoT market continues to explode, the popularity of proprietary wireless solutions increasingly grows as designers look to optimize the performance and cost of their products without being constrained by industry standard or alliance requirements. From a market standpoint, we understand how critical it is for our designers to design a highly optimized proprietary network, which can often make a product stand out from competing products with unique performance and feature differentiators.

Despite the popularity of proprietary wireless solutions – building out the designs can sometimes be a challenge for designers as it requires a deep understanding of all aspects from the physical layer and regulatory requirements to the network layer and application layer. Our Simplicity Studio development software simplifies this process and helps Flex Gecko customers maximize their hardware while creating unique device innovations. Go here to learn more about our supporting software development kits.

Source: https://www.silabs.com/community/blog.entry.html/2017/11/15/new_flex_gecko_wirel-tdUn