Silicon Labs Unveils BG29 Bluetooth LE Wireless SoC for Miniature Devices

Silicon Labs announced its new Series 2 BG29 family of wireless SoCs, designed to bring high compute and connectivity to the smallest form factor Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) devices without compromising performance. A highly efficient, high memory, low-power, and ultra compact SoC designed for secure and high performance wireless networking applications, this new BG29 SoC is ideal for today's most intensive Bluetooth LE applications in wearables, health and medical devices, asset trackers, and battery-powered sensors.  Building smaller connected devices without sacrificing performance or power remains a key development obstacle and the BG29 represents a significant breakthrough. Available with a choice of three different Arm MCUs (M33, 34 and 35), the EFR32BG29 devices deliver high-performance wireless, long battery life, large memory capacity, and multi-connection support in even the smallest devices, like blood glucose monitors, where it was previously extremely challenging.

The new Silicon Labs EFR32BG29 wireless SoC is available in compact quad flat no-lead (QFN) and wafer-level chip scale packages (WLCSP), featuring substantial memory with significant RAM and Flash capacities. These extended memory resources enable advanced applications such as real-time data processing, complex algorithm execution, and high-speed communication protocols. The family also features a DCDC boost for wide voltage range support, a Coulomb counter for accurate battery monitoring, and Silicon Labs Secure Vault High designed for PSA Level 3 to protect sensitive data.

"With the BG29, developers don't have to settle," says Jacob Alamat, senior vice president for the Home and Life business unit at Silicon Labs. "We're combining high connectivity and performance with small size and exceptional security – empowering device makers to break records in tiny connectivity."

With a compact size, the BG29 is available in both WLCSP and QFN packages. The WLCSP can be used for tiny devices like battery powered sensors and even one-time use health applications. Meanwhile, the QFN package is ideal for less size-constrained device types such as remote controls, access control, and all types of wearables.
 
With 1MB Flash and 256kB RAM, the devices are ready for demanding applications, keeping data tracking going even during long smartphone connection breaks. The integrated DCDC Boost provides a wide voltage range, enabling single-cell alkaline, Silver-Oxide, and button cells and reducing the device's form factor. The integrated Coulomb Counter enables accurate battery level monitoring on portable medical devices to avoid battery depletion during critical health application usage and enhance the user experience of other wearables and devices.

The Secure Vault High with Virtual Secure Engine provides robust security capabilities protecting the device against scalable local and remote software and hardware attacks by providing advanced encryption, secure key management, and authentication.

The BG29 family of devices is expected to become generally available in Q3 of 2025.
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