The IoT trend has made the demand for devices connecting to the Internet more and more significant; according to the latest market survey report by the Bluetooth SIG, it is estimated that the application of data transfer through Bluetooth alone will reach an annual shipment of 1.46 billion in 2025 with a compound annual growth rate of 11%. The development of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has also been gradually flourishing in recent years, and in addition to wireless audio transmissions, pure data transfers are also trendy applications.

Among the standards formulated by the Bluetooth SIG, the data transfer function of Bluetooth can also be divided into peripheral devices and central devices; peripheral devices usually send broadcasts continually, notifying the surroundings of its existence, while central devices scan the environment continuously to check whether there are peripheral devices that can be connected. Once the central device receives the broadcast information from the peripheral device, a connection can be made to the peripheral device. After the connection is established successfully, data can be transferred between the devices. A common IoT application is where smartphones act as the central device and control corresponding peripheral devices through an APP. For example, Bluetooth toothbrushes, electronic scales to the latest Bluetooth electric doors, windows, mechanical controls, etc. NuMicro^® M031BT/M032BT provides two reference samples of device setting requirements in BSP. Also, it provides APP samples for connecting to iOS or Android smartphones to help clients quickly get started with application development. The Bluetooth data transfer function can accelerate the demands for device networking and promptly connect to the development of IoT devices.

Nuvoton’s NuMicro^® M031BT/M032BT are equipped with the BLE 5.0 low energy Bluetooth microcontroller series using Arm^® Cortex^®-M0 as the core; its operating frequency is as high as 72 MHz and has a maximum of 512 KB Flash and 96 KB SRAM built-in. BLE 5.0 and 2.4 GHz dual-mode function is also provided; compared to traditional BLE SoCs integrated with simple peripherals, the NuMicro^® M031BT/M032BT series has rich peripherals and outstanding analog control functions built-in, realizing one microcontroller equipped with rich control functions, and wireless connection function with analog peripheral devices. It can run on 1.8V to 3.6V operating voltages, has a 32-bit hardware multiplier/divider built-in, a maximum of 9-channel PDMA, 16-channel 12-bit 2 MSPS high-sampling-rate ADC that can operate on 1.8V low voltage and provide accurate and fast performances, and 24-channel 144 MHz PWM that can quickly respond to and accurately control external devices. In addition, M031BT/M032BT also provides rich peripherals. It supports a maximum of 1 set of USB, eight sets of 6 MHz UART that supports single-wire transmission, two sets of I2C, two sets of highly flexible universal serial control interface (USCI) that can be set as UART, I2C, or SPI, available in 5mm x 5mm QFN48 and 8mm x 8mm QFN68 packages, and passed Bluetooth SIG certification and obtained two QDIDs of Component (Tested) and End Product, ensuring the Bluetooth connection quality and compatibility of the products so that customers can easily integrate them in the designs of their end products.

Product information on the Nuvoton NuMicro^® M031BT/M032BT series:

https://www.nuvoton.com/products/microcontrollers/arm-cortex-m0-mcus/m031bt-series/

https://www.nuvoton.com/products/microcontrollers/arm-cortex-m0-mcus/m032bt-series/