Silicon Labs' BG2x Bluetooth SoC leads wearable device innovation and creates a new era of AI healthy living

SiliconLabs

As people's pursuit of personal health and smart life continues to heat up, the wearable device market is booming. In this field full of opportunities and challenges, Silicon Labs (also known as "Silicon Labs") has become a leader in the industry with its deep technology accumulation and keen market insight. Pranay Dixit, Wearables & Lifestyle Business Manager of Silicon Labs' Home & Lifestyle Business Unit, recently sat down with EEPW Electronics World to discuss the current state of the wearables market, the company's strategy, and technological innovation.

Pranay Dixit candidly stated that the wearables market is an important area of growth and innovation. With the increasing focus on personal health and fitness, as well as the increasing connectivity technology, the wearables market is growing rapidly. In particular, smart wearable devices with health monitoring and fitness tracking functions are favored by the majority of consumers.

According to Pranay Dixit, the main drivers of the current market growth include the pursuit of healthy living, the enhancement of connectivity technologies, and the integration of advanced technologies. Among them, the continuous advancement of sensor technology enables wearable devices to more accurately track users' biometrics and physical signals, providing users with more comprehensive and personalized health monitoring services.

Especially after the pandemic, the trend of pursuing a healthy lifestyle is becoming more and more obvious, and the medical market has become an emerging application field for wearable devices.

Silicon Labs is also providing a comprehensive solution for this market, especially for enhanced connected health and wellness applications, with its technology portfolio supporting the development of smartwatches, fitness bands, activity trackers, pet accessories, and medical wearables such as blood glucose monitors and heart rate sensors. Silicon Labs offers wireless solutions, including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies, designed to ensure reliable, low-power connectivity for these devices.

Key considerations for the design of wearables for the medical market include minimizing power consumption, optimizing wireless performance for resource-constrained devices, reducing form factor, improving battery level tracking, enhancing device security, and improving measurement accuracy.

Silicon Labs' technologies, such as the highly flexible EFR32 architecture that supports a wide range of low-power modes, and the BG27 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC with ultra-low transmit power and superior receive sensitivity, are good examples of how we approach these design considerations. In addition, Silicon Labs enhances security with Secure Vault™ technology, which is critical for wearables that handle sensitive health data.

In addition to the data security of wearable devices, the stability of wearable device connection is also a crucial part of the user experience, in the field of personal wearable devices, users often change physical locations frequently, resulting in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections also need to be changed frequently. To address this issue, Silicon Labs has enhanced device connectivity and compatibility in a number of ways:

The first is enhanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and compatibility with access points through a multifaceted approach, including robust RF communication links, managed and unmanaged Wi-Fi coexistence, and multi-protocol support.

Second, Silicon Labs uses technology to optimize transmission power and sensitivity to ensure reliable long-range IoT connectivity. This is critical for devices that frequently change physical locations and need to switch between different Wi-Fi or Bluetooth access points without interrupting the Wi-Fi connection in the same location. Wi-Fi coexistence management supports multiple 2.4 GHz technologies, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread, and Bluetooth, to operate simultaneously without interfering with each other.

Finally, Silicon Labs' products support a variety of IoT protocols, allowing you to seamlessly switch between protocols based on application needs. This multi-protocol capability enables devices to support a wide range of protocols such as Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), Zigbee, OpenThread, Matter, Wi-SUN, and even vendor-specific proprietary protocols. This support is essential for wearables that connect to multiple base devices, ensuring compatibility between different ecosystems.

Silicon Labs is committed to providing solutions that meet these needs, as exemplified by its second-generation wireless development platform, the EFR32xG24 and EFR32xG28 multiprotocol wireless SoCs. These SoCs are designed to provide high-performance, low-power, and secure solutions for IoT devices, including wearables.

Optimized for applications that require robust wireless connectivity, such as smart home, lighting, and building automation products, they integrate features such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) hardware accelerators and the highest levels of IoT security, demonstrating how Silicon Labs is integrating advanced technologies to enhance wearable functionality and security.

When it comes to chip design for wearables, Pranay Dixit also admits that the convergence of technology and industry in wearables is a crucial evolution that drives the development and adoption of these devices in a variety of applications. Silicon Labs' approach focuses on integrating secure, intelligent wireless connectivity technologies to enable a more connected world.

Silicon Labs positions itself as a leader in this space and offers a comprehensive portfolio of flexible, highly integrated Bluetooth products and Wi-Fi modules and SoCs designed for the Internet of Things.

These solutions are extremely important for wearables that are essential for multiprotocol, RF performance, and ultra-low power consumption. In addition, Silicon Labs believes it is important to support the broadest range of multi-protocol solutions to ensure that developers can build integrated devices for any application. Our development platform is designed to support industry-leading computing power, wireless performance and energy efficiency, and the highest level of IoT security.

In the face of today's AI boom, Pranay Dixit also told EEPW that Silicon Labs strategically charts a path for integrating AI/ML capabilities in wearables and cloud implementations. Silicon Labs has achieved significant reductions in bandwidth requirements and power consumption by embedding AI/ML hardware accelerators in its second-generation platform's wireless SoCs, such as the BG24 and MG24.

This technological advancement marks a significant advancement in wearable technology by increasing the ability of devices to make smarter decisions directly at the edge, minimizing reliance on cloud computing for real-time data processing.

Integrating AI/ML capabilities directly on the SoC enables real-time data processing on the device without relying on cloud processing. Not only does this speed up the decision-making process by eliminating network latency, but it also saves energy by reducing the need for continuous data transfer to the cloud.

For the wearable space, this means smarter, faster, longer-lasting devices with advanced features such as health monitoring, predictive maintenance, and a personalized user experience without compromising battery life.

Finally, Pranay Dixit further revealed to EEPW that for the future trend of wearables, Silicon Labs values the importance of AI/ML capabilities in wearables, and we are focused on enabling smarter applications and computing directly on the device, so that cloud processing can be avoided to reduce latency.

We provide ultra-low-power wireless solutions, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth solutions with advanced IoT security technologies, designed to design stylish devices with reliable connectivity. For wearables, minimizing power consumption and optimizing form factor is critical, while also ensuring security with Secure Vault™ technology. Our solutions support a range of applications, from smart hospitals to consumer health wearables.

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