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TI Launches Pair of Wi-Fi 6 Companion ICs to Serve IoT System Designs

April 18, 2023 by Jeff Child

As Wi-Fi 6-enabled IoT devices proliferate into the billions, TI’s new Wi-Fi 6 companion chips are aimed at meeting the challenges associated with this crowded landscape.

Gone are the days when Wi-Fi was simply a wireless networking technology for laptops and phones. Today, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies are connecting a truly vast variety of nodes for internet-of-things (IoT) applications.

With all that in mind, today Texas Instruments (TI) announced two new members of its SimpleLink family of Wi-Fi 6 companion ICs—the CC3300, a Wi-Fi 6 only device, and the CC3301, a Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5.3 IC.

 

The CC330X Wi-Fi 6 companion ICs are designed for today’s era of proliferating Wi-Fi-based IoT nodes, including in today’s smart home.

The CC330X Wi-Fi 6 companion ICs are designed for today’s era of proliferating Wi-Fi-based IoT nodes, including in today’s smart home.

 

In this article, we look at the problem these ICs aim to address, we examine the key features of the new devices, and we share thoughts from our briefing with two TI execs: Marian Kost, vice president and general manager for connectivity, and Naomi Heller, general manager for Wi-Fi.

 

Entering the Era of 2.5 Billion Wi-Fi 6 Devices

Quoting statistics shared by the Wi-Fi Alliance, Marian Kost says that the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E is accelerating in a huge way, with 2.5 billion Wi-Fi 6 devices expected to ship globally in 2023.

Importantly, Kost says that these new Wi-Fi nodes are not just access points for our laptops and phones, but rather for industrial IoT applications, smart meters, home appliances, electrical vehicle (EV) charging stations, and many other system designs.

This mix of more application types and just generally more network nodes brings on numerous challenges for system designers. “We're getting into a more and more dense wireless environment,” says Kost. “And within a dense environment, you have to deal with making sure that you have very good RF performance and robust wireless connections.” Moreover, these connections have to work, within buildings, outside of buildings, and across different temperature ranges.
 

The proliferation of Wi-Fi 6 nodes makes designing in high-density environments a challenge in several ways. 

The proliferation of Wi-Fi 6 nodes makes designing in high-density environments a challenge in several ways. 

 

Security also plays a more significant role in this new crowded IoT node era. “This makes standard compliance and the security aspect of the compliance extremely important,” says Kost. Ease of use is equally critical, says Kost. “We’ve built these devices to make sure that this Wi-Fi family of companion ICs can be attached to any type of embedded system in a fairly quick manner.”

Finally, the design challenge of coexistence has moved front and center. Kost says that, just within TI’s Connectivity group, the company is supporting 14 different wireless technologies today. “It's really important to focus on coexistence and not just look at the Wi-Fi technology or any other wireless connectivity technology in an isolated manner,” he says. “That's why coexistence is also something that we always keep in mind as we're designing new technology.”

 

The CC3300 and CC3301 Companion ICs

Getting into the details of the new ICs, Naomi Heller says that at the heart of the CC3300/3301 devices is the Wi-Fi/BLE core, which provides a robust and stable wireless connection. This is complemented by a variety of general purpose interfaces, along with SDIO, SPI, and UART links.

A key capability for these devices is interoperability, according to Heller. “The most important thing for our customer base is to have a Wi-Fi solution that just works in any environment,” she says. “That’s why interoperability is a critical topic within our lab. We actually test against more than 230 access points and make sure that we have both that stable connection and consistent performance. And we’re making sure that it all works over the full temperature range between -40ºC to 105ºC.

 

Block diagram of the CC3301 Wi-Fi 6 and BLE 5.3 companion IC

Block diagram of the CC3301 Wi-Fi 6 and BLE 5.3 companion IC

 

Security is another key feature of the new devices, says Heller. “The CC330X family supports both standard security features like WPA3, as well as features such as secure boot, firmware authentication, and secure key storage within the device.”

Last but not least, says Heller is the design flexibility that the CC330X chips allow. “We provide all the interfaces, tools and software to allow engineers to connect to an MCU or MPU environment with very simple integration steps,” she says.

The CC330X ICs also connected easily to artificial intelligence (AI)-capable processors such as TI’s new AM62A Arm Cortex-based vision processors. For industrial applications, engineers can use the new companion chips with host MCUs like TI’s 2.4 GHz CC2652R7 SimpleLink wireless MCU. Alternatively, a TI AM243x MCU-based system can leverage Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE 5.3, Thread, Zigbee 3.0, and Matter protocols. More information is available in the datasheets for the CC3300 and the CC3301.

 

Using Wi-Fi for Smart Energy Management

In TI’s briefing, they discussed a couple of use cases for the CC330X ICs, including designs for EV chargers and medical devices. But of particular interest was their examination of Wi-Fi used to do smart energy management within a home.

Discussing the diagram shown below, Kost says the idea is to gather a real-time awareness of energy consumption. “Here you can see there's multiple different devices illustrated, from the grid to the home to the parking lot,” he says.

 

Using the CC330X chips, Wi-Fi 6 connectivity can enable real-time awareness of energy consumption throughout a home.

Using the CC330X chips, Wi-Fi 6 connectivity can enable real-time awareness of energy consumption throughout a home.

 

“It starts with connected micro inverters and power optimizers on roof solar panels,” says Kost. Those connect to the string inverter where the power is distributed to different places. “If I don't park and charge my car, I want to be able to store that energy so it’s available once I need it.” Wi-Fi connectivity can provide IoT connectivity to manage that process.

Meanwhile, smart metering and energy control hubs can access info from home HVAC units and heat pumps and enable them to be controlled to drive the overall energy consumption to a better and more efficient level, says Kost.

 

“This Wi-Fi-enabled real time awareness of energy consumption becomes more and more important and helps us manage the overall power grid much better. These Wi-Fi devices can now be added to all those types of different electrical control systems.”

 

Eval Board and Samples Available Now

TI says engineers can request samples of the CC33xx companion ICs now. The chips are offered in a quad flat no-lead (QFN) package and start at $1.60 (US) in 1,000-unit quantities. 

The BP-CC3301 evaluation board is available for purchase on TI.com for $39. TI plans to go to volume production for two chips in Q4 2023. Meanwhile, the company says it’s also working on pin-to-pin compatible, dual-band 2.4- and 5-GHz Wi-Fi 6 devices, expected to sample later this year.

 

All images used courtesy of Texas Instruments