By Telecom Lead Team: Texas Instruments has launched its
new CC2541 Bluetooth low energy system-on-chip (SoC), aimed at Bluetooth Smart
sensor applications for consumer medical, sports and fitness, security,
entertainment and home automation.
The SoC offers a 33 percent reduction in power
consumption compared to TI’s CC2540 SoC when transmitting at 1 milliwatt output
power, while maintaining robust RF performance.
The CC2541 is pin-to-pin compatible with the CC2540,
which allows manufacturers to take advantage of the power savings through an
easy migration of existing designs. An associated CC2541EMK development kit
will also be available to further simplify and reduce design time for new Bluetooth
Smart devices.
“We’re excited to see the advancements in the Bluetooth
low energy space with Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices already
available and several about to hit the market. With the CC2541 SoC TI continues
its commitment to offer low-power and easily-deployable Bluetooth low
energy solutions to manufacturers. Our new CC2541 SoC adds to TI’s full system-solution,
aimed at simplifying design and shrinking development time for Bluetooth
Smart sensor applications,” said Sid Shaw, product marketing manager,
low-power RF, TI.
“Bluetooth 4.0 technology is expanding into
new markets as innovative use cases and products become available. We are
pleased to see TI enabling longer battery life with the CC2541 SoC to further
fuel interest in Bluetooth 4.0 technology and the growth of Bluetooth
Smart and Smart Ready devices,” said Michael Foley, executive
director, Bluetooth SIG.
TI will also showcase its CC2541DK-SENSOR development kit
for Android- and iOS-based smartphone applications. The kit opens up the world
of Bluetooth low energy-based sensors to smartphone application
developers because it requires no RF hardware knowledge or embedded software
programming on the sensor-application side.
The six sensors included in the kit enable applications
such as tag trackers, thermostats, weather stations, theft alarms, remote
controls and others that can be controlled by a consumer’s smartphone. The kit
will be available for purchase in early 2Q 2012.
