Question about SoC vs Module wireless

Hi Robbin,

SoC ( Silicon On Chip ) is the silicon integrated chip solution. In case of wireless solutions, A silicon die will contain minimum of - a radio, wireless controller and HCI mechanism.

A module will take a step forward. It will contain passive components required for operating the SoC - including crystals, capacitors and resistors. Most of the modules will come with an integrated Antenna also.

Module is basically the SoC with its essential external components soldered on a PCB with a shield.  Modules are generally pre-certified like FCC and CE. So it reduces cost and effort to get your product certified.

Now coming to your requirements. Is there any particular reason you chose MSP430F5529 ? It's good low power MCU, No doubt. But nRF52810 already comes with an application processor with decent amount of RAM and peripherals along with BLE solution.

In my opinion you don't need a separate MCU. You can use nRF52810 as your BLE chip as well as application processor. After all ARM Cortex M4 is a much faster processor.

nRF52810 is an SoC. If you are buying nRF52812 as chip then you need to add crystals capacitors and an external antenna to the design, But there are cheap development boards which comes with all you want. Example: https://in.element14.com/nordic-semiconductor/nrf52-dk/dev-kit-bluetooth-low-energy-soc/dp/2842319?st=nRF52810

In my opinion for projects this kit is more than enough.

But if you are looking for module solution then there are lot of third-party vendors who manufactures  nRF52810 based solutions. Take a look at this page: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/3rd-Party/3rd-party-modules

I am focusing on nRF52810 is because you are familiar with the chip. There are lots of other vendors who provides BLE solutions.

For any help you can contact me.

Regards,

Aswin

Hi Aswin,

Thank you very much for your response!

Thanks for your explanation about the difference between SoCs and modules, that was very clear.

Now, we have found literature (from IEEE) that suggests that a separate microcontroller and BLE device is more power efficient. It argues SoCs are not very power efficient. Therefore we made the decision to use a low power microcontroller (the MSP430) and then look for a low power BLE device. The paper talks about the nRF8001, which actually does not have a built in microcontroller. Such devies however don't seem to be made anymore? Nordic nowadays only produces SoCs which all include microcontrollers. Do you see where my confusion comes from?

So in short: We want a BLE device without microcontroller since that should be more power efficient and allows us to pick our components all by ourselves.

Thank you!

Hi Robbin,

Can you be more specific about your power budget. I totally agree MSP430 is a low power micro-controller. But keeping a low power micro-controller and a separate Wireless chip won't necessarily make your system power efficient.

nRF8001 is a obsolete part and the Nordic themselves are not recommending that chip for any new design.

I think the IEEE paper you are mentioning is also old.

All modern BLE application chips comes with application processor (not the BLE chipsets that you see in PCs and Laptops). You always have the flexibility to turn off the radio ( The power hungry part ) any time you want.

What is the % of use of radio in your usecase? How much data needs to be pushed @ what interval?

I have seen nrf51822 solutions with CR2302 battery running for a long time.

If you are looking for a serial bridge using BLE then you can consider BGX13p module. You can stream data to the module using a simple UART connection. I have recently done a Roadtest on this module. Please take a look at here.

Silicon Labs Bluetooth Design Kit - Review

But this will give you very little room for tweaking.

Regards,

Aswin

Hi Robbin,

Can you be more specific about your power budget. I totally agree MSP430 is a low power micro-controller. But keeping a low power micro-controller and a separate Wireless chip won't necessarily make your system power efficient.

nRF8001 is a obsolete part and the Nordic themselves are not recommending that chip for any new design.

I think the IEEE paper you are mentioning is also old.

All modern BLE application chips comes with application processor (not the BLE chipsets that you see in PCs and Laptops). You always have the flexibility to turn off the radio ( The power hungry part ) any time you want.

What is the % of use of radio in your usecase? How much data needs to be pushed @ what interval?

I have seen nrf51822 solutions with CR2302 battery running for a long time.

If you are looking for a serial bridge using BLE then you can consider BGX13p module. You can stream data to the module using a simple UART connection. I have recently done a Roadtest on this module. Please take a look at here.

Silicon Labs Bluetooth Design Kit - Review

But this will give you very little room for tweaking.

Regards,

Aswin

Hello Aswin,

We need to stream around 120kbits every hour. However we have a very limited power budget of around 250mAh.

You might very well be right that already buying the MSP430 might not have been the best option and we might have made a mistake there. But we have to continue our project now using this device. So we are looking for the best options in terms of a BLE device. Would you have any advice on that? Would the BGX13p be useful then?

Regards,

Robbin

That means you have to send ~4 Bytes per second. You can easily achieve that speed in any BLE 4.2 modules.

You can consider BGX13P. Please take a look at here: https://www.silabs.com/wireless/bluetooth/bgx13-wireless-xpress-modules

You can consider HM-10 modules ( based on TIs CC2541)

They both comes with the BLE stack on board and a UART communication for managing the stack.

There are plenty of other modules out there, But for most of them you need to host the stack either in your MCU (MSP430) or in the wireless module itself. If you don't have time don't consider them.

Regards,

Aswin