Renesas Electronics Corporation  introduced the first RA microcontroller (MCU) with an integrated Bluetooth® 5.0 Low Energy radio on 07 May 2020. The single-chip RA4W1 MCU includes a 48 MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex®-M4 core and Bluetooth 5.0 core delivered in a 56-pin QFN package. Together, the RA4W1 MCU and easy-to-use Flexible Software Package (FSP) enables engineers to immediately begin development with Arm ecosystem software and hardware building blocks that work out-of-the-box with RA MCUs.

The RA4W1 MCU makes it easy for embedded designers to develop safe and secure IoT endpoint devices for Industry 4.0, building automation, metering, healthcare, consumer wearable, and home appliance applications. The MCU is also ideal for developing IoT edge devices for wireless sensor networks, IoT hubs, an add-on to gateways, and an aggregator to IoT cloud applications.

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI) announced on May 15 this year the availability of new devices within its KW3x family of microcontrollers (MCUs). The new KW39/38/37 MCUs add Bluetooth 5.0 long-range capabilities and expanded Bluetooth advertising channels. These enhancements are made while offering seamless migration with hardware, software and tools compatibility with the previous generation of devices, KW34/35/36. The connectivity MCUs allow Bluetooth LE devices to communicate at distances of more than a mile and increase the amount of Bluetooth advertising channels and advertising data within the Bluetooth standard, the predominant IoT protocol. The new wireless MCU solutions allow developers to address emerging use cases within automotive and industrial digitization.