Redpine Wi-Fi+Bluetooth SoC Delivers Dramatically Lower Power Consumption

Redpine Signals has released a new report by the Tolly Group that shows its RS9116 and RS14100 multi-protocol Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth solutions delivering dramatically lower power consumption than other competing solutions in the market. Tolly is an independent test lab and provider of third-party validation services. They have worked with virtually every major vendor and evaluated the most important products and technologies to appear over the past decade.

The tests performed by the Tolly Group included Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) scenarios and benchmarked power consumption in Wi-Fi Standby Associated Mode, while running a secure TCP stack (with and without co-channel traffic) and in a multi- protocol scenario using Bluetooth Low Energy.

In multiple test scenarios, the power consumption of the Redpine Signals solutions were dramatically lower than the competition, delivering up to 25x lower power in Wi-Fi standby associated tests, up to 22x lower power in Wi-Fi TCP + TLS tests, and up to 15x lower power in multi-protocol Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth Low Energy tests.

The RS14100 and RS9116 represent the industry's lowest-power wireless MCU and connectivity solutions for battery operated IoT devices. Both solutions implement multi-protocol wireless connectivity with dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) 802.11abgn Wi-Fi, dual-mode Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4 which can be used for Thread or ZigBee connectivity. The RS14100 features an ARM Cortex-M4F which can operate up to 180 MHz and includes up to 4 MB of flash for applications.

Users can choose from various SoC and module packages based on their system requirements, including the industry's smallest integrated module at 4.6mm x 7.9mm. The WiSeConnect embedded products provide high throughput with integrated wireless stacks, wireless profiles and networking stack. n-Link hosted products interface to processors running Linux, Android or Windows operating systems.

The RS14100 and the RS9116 feature a patent-pending 'big-little' architecture at every level including MCU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4, providing optimized transitions between high-performance and low-power operating modes. This unique architecture enables the industry's lowest Wi-Fi standby associated power together with integrated Bluetooth 5 which has lower power than even stand-alone Bluetooth 5 devices. These ultra-low power capabilities enable battery-operated devices such as security cameras, smart locks, video doorbells, fitness bands, industrial sensors and location tags to have over 3-4x more battery life compared to competing solutions.

The RS14100 includes an "always-on" sensor-hub with hardware accelerators for voice-activity detection (VAD), vector filtering, interpolation and matrix multiplication, sensor data collection and capacitive touch. This enables new applications such as voice triggers for primary battery-operated devices. It also supports a rich set of digital and analog peripherals including CAN, Ethernet, eMMC/SD Card, OpAmp, ADC, DAC and USB OTG.