Small Bluetooth Chips – How to Choose the Right Solution for Medical Devices and Wearables?

Overview of the Smallest Bluetooth Chips

Here’s an overview of Silicon Labs’ smallest Bluetooth chips optimized for medical devices and wearables.

BG22

The BG22 Bluetooth LE SoC family with a size of 4x4 mm is an excellent fit for feature-optimized portable medical devices and wearables. The BG22 offers 512k of Flash, leaving room for a small application that takes advantage of the many features of the BG22. The Bill of Material (BoM) can be reduced with a minimum antenna/matching network setup, the integrated crystal, and 16-bit ADC. The extremely low power operation of BG22 allows for the use of smaller battery.

The BG22 TQFN (Thin QFN) package with a mere 0.3 mm thickness enables product designs with a slimmer PCB board architecture.

The BGM220S System-in-Package (SiP) module is based on the BG22 SoC and it integrates more than 20 critical components, such as decoupling capacitors, DCDC components, crystal, RF matching, and harmonic filtering in a tiny footprint of 6x6 mm, enabling device makers to reduce their PCB size radically. Additionally, BGM220S module comes with an integrated antenna and worldwide RF certifications, accelerating development time significantly.

BG22 is DTSec compliant, meeting the defined protection profile for BGMs, CGMs and insulin delivery systems.

With Silicon Labs Bluetooth SDK and tools, you get the software, sample applications, reference design, and everything needed to get started when building a customized medical application!

BG27

The Silicon Labs BG27 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC family is a successor of BG22, offering increased RAM and Flash memory, exceptional wireless performance with ultra-low-power (just like BG22), and many integrated functionalities you need when developing medical and wearable devices, including:

• DTSec compliance for Diabetes Management Devices
• The highest level of Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP) certification ensuring resistance to hardware and software attacks, including the IEEE 2621 standard for medical devices in diabetes management
• DCDC Boost enables 1.5v operation off single-cell alkaline, silver oxide, and button cell batteries typically used on medical applications such as patches, wearable electrocardiograms (ECG), and continuous glucose monitors (CGM)
• WLCSP package with dimensions of 2.3x2.6 mm for extremely small device form factors
• Coulomb Counter for accurate battery level tracking to enhance user safety and experience
• Wake-up Pin allows products to spend months in warehouses and transport, consuming less than 20 nA, until awoken, ensuring the battery remains fully charged when the device is needed the most.

BG24

The Silicon Labs BG24 Bluetooth LE SoC family is a highly advanced Bluetooth LE solution offering large RAM and Flash memories and exceptional wireless performance with ultra-low power. Its many integrated functionalities include an AI/ML accelerator for faster and more energy-efficient Machine Learning (ML) inferencing and a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) that can be coupled with external Operational Amplifiers to form a complete Analog Front End (AFE) with reduced cost, space, and complexity of integration. BG24 is available as an ultra-compact WLCSP package (3.0x3.1 mm) to enable extremely small device form factors.

The BGM240S System-in-Package (SiP) module is based on the BG24 SoC and it integrates more than 20 critical components, such as decoupling capacitors, DCDC components, crystal, RF matching, and harmonic filtering in a compact footprint of 7x7 mm, enabling you to reduce the device’s PCB size. The integrated antenna and worldwide RF certifications accelerate your product development time significantly.

Learn More About Small Bluetooth Devices

Choosing the smallest optimal chip is only one of the many ways to reduce your Bluetooth product design.

Download our whitepaper: Antenna Design for Small Bluetooth IoT Devices to learn how SiP modules and smarter antenna design can do wonders for minimizing your PCB footprint and BoM without compromising wireless performance!

To learn more about our CGM reference design based on the BG27 Bluetooth LE chip as well as features that enhance patient experience, download whitepaper: CGM Reference Design Based on the BG27.