Bluetooth IC supports multiple communication methods

The Bluetooth Classic communication method enables high speed communication with a wide range of devices such as smartphones, laptops and other (legacy) Bluetooth peripherals, while the low energy “Bluetooth Smart” method is newly adopted in the Bluetooth V4.0 standard and reduces power consumption, shortens connection set up time and is designed for portable devices such as heart rate monitors, temperature meters, remote switches or proximity sensors. The two Bluetooth communication methods are not interoperable and require different device applications to match the communication method of the host appliance.

By incorporating both the Serial Port Profile that is used for Basic Classic communication and the Generic Attribute Profile used for Low Energy communication into a single IC, TC35661SBG-501 contributes to component reduction and development efficiency efforts. The inclusion of the SPP and GATT profiles on-chip reduces loads on external microcontrollers. Standard and proprietary BLE profiles can easily be attached to interface to the high level GATT API.

TC35661SBG-501 supports UART, I²C and GPIO interfaces as well as sleep mode and host wake-up functions which aid battery life for mobile devices. The IC supports operating voltages of 1.8V or 3.3V and is housed in a TFBGA64 package measuring 5mm x 5mm/ 7mm x 7mm, with 0.5/0.8 mm ball pitch.

The IC has been pre-qualified by Bluetooth SIG and a starter kit and application notes are available to ease the embedded project development.